Latest news with #Blueprintfor
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Maryland General Assembly alters Blueprint education plan: Here's what changed
With a little more than five hours before adjourning, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation Monday evening to alter the Blueprint for Maryland's Future. The change maintains funding for community schools but bumps collaborative time implementation. 'This session has seen dramatic progress restoring the vast majority of the proposed cuts to our schools and ensures that everyone pays their fair share and more sustainably funds our public schools and services,' Paul Lemle, the president of the Maryland State Education Association, said in a statement after Senate lawmakers voted to approve the bill. Both the Maryland House and Senate chambers approved the bill, which was negotiated following differences in approach to amend the bill presented by Gov. Wes Moore earlier this year. The legislation was passed largely along party lines and with limited discussion. The legislature was tasked with contending with a $3 billion-and-growing budget deficit at the start of the 2025 legislative session. Understanding Maryland's tough fiscal situation, the Moore administration offered a bill to stop funding increases for community schools, or schools that receive Concentration of Poverty Grants, for two years and pause the implementation of teacher collaborative time and its associated funding increases for four years. Collaborative time is afforded to teachers for curriculum planning, grading and professional development outside of the classroom. The House approved Moore's bill in early March, but not without completely restoring the community school funding and reducing the collaborative time implementation from four years to one. The Senate struck a balance between the governor's proposal and the bill as it passed out of the House, restoring the community school funding increases in full, but maintaining Moore's four-year pause on collaborative time implementation. The negotiated bill now heads to Moore's desk for his signature, restores the funding increases for community schools and allows collaborative time funding to go to local school boards for fiscal year 2026. However, collaborative time funding increases would be paused for fiscal years 2027 and 2028. 'While there is a delay to increased funding for collaborative time implementation, the final bill is a significant improvement over where this conversation began in January,' said Lemle. House Republicans applauded the collaborative time pause. 'It does move in the right direction,' Del. Matt Morgan, a St. Mary's County Republican, said. 'We support that delay.' Because there is a pause in collaborative time increases, the legislation headed to Moore also reduces the amount of foundation spending per pupil because funding tied to collaborative time is baked into that formula. Should Moore approve the bill, this per-pupil decrease would not impact spending for special education, English learners, or students most at risk of not succeeding academically, or students at the Maryland School for the Deaf, the Maryland School for the Blind, or the SEED School of Maryland. House Majority Whip Jazz Lewis, a Prince George's County Democrat, said Monday night that leadership in his chamber is 'proud' to stand with their colleagues in the Senate and governor's office on where the bill landed, especially considering the federal cuts to education spending recently implemented by President Donald Trump's administration. 'I think we're proud to stand arm-in-arm with our colleagues in the Senate and the governor in having a plan that doesn't cut core services to kids across the state, maintains the gains we're making through the Blueprint and doubles down on our promise that every child in every zip code is going to get a quality education,' Lewis said. ________
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Blueprint education plan inches forward in Senate, confrontation with House looms
Educators were called to anxwer question so the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee as it debated an education reform bill. From right, they are Joy Schaefer, Alex Reese, Elise Brown, Mike Thomas and Mary Pat Fannon. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters) The state's sweeping education reform bill took another painstaking step forward Tuesday, when a second Senate committee give it preliminary OK and rejected a separate House version. But the 6-2 vote by the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee merely sends the Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act back to the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee, which needs to agree to the latest changes before sending the bill to the full Senate. From there, the bill has to go back to the House, which will likely reject the Senate plan before convening a conference committee to iron out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. All with less than two weeks left in the legislative session. Besides approving Senate Bill 429 Tuesday, the committee also known as Triple-E voted to make the House version conform to the Senate version, rejecting several cuts on collaborative time and per pupil funding first proposed by Gov. Wes Moore (D). Sen. Mary Washington (D-Baltimore City) abstained because 'there's still more to work do on such an important bill,' she said after the committee meeting that lasted more than two hours. One major difference the committee approved versus the House version deals with community schools, those schools where at least 75% of the students are eligible for free and reduced-price meals. According to the state Department of Education, about half of the state's schools have that community school designation. The committee agreed with the governor's proposal to require that all 24 school systems develop countywide Blueprint implementation plans focused strictly on community schools. The House struck that proposal, noting that local school officials already have to submit plans to the state Department of Education and the Accountability and Implementation Board, as part of the overall Blueprint for Maryland's Future 10-year reform plan. The board began to approve updated Blueprint plans in October. Tuesday's discussion became a bit animated when it came to instructional coaches. State Department of Education officials said the state currently has 803 instructional coaches, experienced educators who help administrators, teachers and other 'education professionals' learn how to prepare lesson plans, assess student data and other duties. The goal is to hire up to 200 additional coaches in a four-year period. Elise Brown, assistant state superintendent for instructional programs and services, said about 63% of the current coaches work in only five school systems. 'We do not see an equal distribution,' she said. Alex Reese, chief of staff at the department who attended the meeting to represent State Superintendent Carey Wright, said the average ratio of teachers to coaches is 79 to 1. Reese said three school systems – one in Western Maryland, one on the Eastern Shore and another in Southern Maryland – have no instructional coaches. 'Best practice would be for a coach to coach a maximum of 12 teachers,' he said. Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D-Howard and Montgomery) asked what's the annual salary for an instructional coach. Reese said the base salary is about $125,000. Although Fry Hester supports instructional coaches, she said some of that money to seek coaches could be used to hire additional personnel in cybersecurity and other technology for schools. 'We have one person in the entire state of Maryland, at the state level, looking out for cybersecurity for the local schools,' said Fry Hester. But she agreed to withhold an amendment to add additional personnel toward cyber security after committee chair Sen. Brian Feldman (D-Montgomery) said more information was needed. 'We're immediately going to lose 200 teachers,' Fry Hester said. 'We're already short on teachers.'
