Latest news with #ConcentrationofPovertyGrants
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
21-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Maryland state Senate committee votes to keep some of Gov. Moore's plans in Blueprint education bill
BALTIMORE — A state Senate committee voted Friday to stick to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore's four-year pause on teacher collaborative time and maintain funding increases for community schools under the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, diverging in policy from the House. 'If this is ultimately going to succeed and we are going to lift up every child, that's the place where that's going to happen,' Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chair Guy Guzzone, a Howard County Democrat, said of community school funding after the voting session. 'I'm not saying there won't be a time when we have to deal with scaling that back, pacing it in a different way, but I think we can hold for right now on that.' The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee voted on amendments to Moore's Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act Friday morning, splitting policy proposed by the governor and the House, which has already passed the bill, down the middle. Moore's bill to alter the state's landmark Blueprint for Maryland's Future education reform policy, which he testified in favor of in 2020, originally proposed a two-year delay in funding increases for schools that receive Concentration of Poverty Grants or community schools and would have paused the implementation of teacher collaborative time for four years. Earlier this month, the House chamber voted to restore the funding increases for community schools and shorten the pause on collaborative time from four years to one. Guzzone, who offered the amendments to the bill Friday, said he prefers the term 'pacing' over 'pause.' Sen. J.B. Jennings, a Baltimore County Republican who sits on the Budget and Taxation Committee, said that, while they provided more cuts than the House, he doesn't think it's enough to 'get us out of the perils we're facing right now.' In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, Jennings praised Moore for the cuts he proposed in the bill's original language. 'He was willing to do what others weren't,' Jennings said. 'The third rail of politics is education. No one wants to cut from it, but we're always adding more and more and more to education funding-wise, and we have to slow it down some.' In restoring the four-year delay in collaborative time implementation, the newly amended bill would reduce the amount of foundation spending per pupil because funding tied to collaborative time is baked into that formula. If passed, this per pupil decrease would not impact spending for special education, English learners or students most at risk of not succeeding academically, as well as those who attend the Maryland School for the Deaf, the Maryland School for the Blind or the SEED School of Maryland. Sen. Karen Lewis Young, a Frederick County Democrat, asked if committee staff knew the financial impact that the lowered spending per pupil would have on local boards of education. The answer was not immediately available. 'Thank you,' Lewis Young sighed. The amended bill would also lower the funding increases that the Maryland Consortium on Coordinated Community Supports, which provides mental health and wraparound services to students, to cap at $100 million annually. The reduction in compensatory spending would save $30 million each year. Additionally, under amendments to Moore's bill adopted by the Senate committee, funding increases would freeze if December's revenue projections from the Maryland Board of Revenue Estimates decrease by $850 million or if federal funds decrease by $712 million, respectively. A combined decrease in revenue projections and federal funding that flows into the state equal to at least $1.2 billion would also trigger a freeze in funding increases. The education policy aspects of the bill need to be amended by the Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Committee before the bill can be debated by the full chamber. _____
