07-02-2025
Educators defend planned leadership academy to train principals, county school leaders
State Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright, center, testifies Thursday with Krishna Tallur, left, the deputy superintendent for finance and operations, and Donna Gunning, assistant superintendent for finance. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
Education officials defended a planned 'leadership academy' for would-be principals and county board leaders, telling lawmakers Thursday that the program is needed to grow a 'pipeline of highly trained and effective school leaders.'
The comments came during a hearing before House Appropriations subcommittee which was considering a legislative analyst's recommendation that funding for the academy be cut in half next year, from the $6.3 million in Gov. Wes Moore's proposed budget to $3 million.
Department of Education officials said they 'respectfully disagree.'
'The academy will focus on developing school leaders, focusing on school leaders of color and those that serve high-poverty schools and low-performing schools,' said Krishna Tallur, deputy state superintendent for the department's Office of Finance and Operations, in testimony to Appropriations Subcommittee on Education and Economic Development.
The cuts to the academy were among several recommended for the budget of the Education Department's headquarters, including a proposed reduction to the proposed Concentration of Poverty Grant program, from the budgeted $3 million down to $2 million next year. That is another cut with which Education Department witnesses said they 'respectfully disagree.'
Both the poverty grants and the leadership academy are called for in the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, the sweeping 10-year education reform plan that has emerged as an early battleground in the state's fight to close a projected $3 billion gap in the $67 billion state budget for fiscal 2026.
Teachers' union lobbies lawmakers to fully fund Blueprint, among legislative priorities
The Blueprint, and the governor's budget, call for the creation of a leadership academy next year under the Department of Education at a cost of $6.3 million.
'That's something we don't have in the state at all,' State Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright said in an interview after testifying to the subcommittee. 'The idea behind our leadership academy was [to look] for aspiring leaders … across the state and provide the training to help them be ready on day one.'
But legislative analysts noted that the state has already started a training program this year for state and local superintendents, at a cost of $3 million. With that money being spent beginning in January 2025, the analysts recommended 'level funding' the academy next year at the same level.
The academy and school system training initiatives are components of a School Leadership Training Program proposed by Moore as part of his 'Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act,' submitted last month as Senate Bill 429 and House Bill 504.
The Senate version is scheduled for a joint bill hearing Feb. 19 before the Budget and Taxation and the Education, Energy and the Environment committees. The House bill will be heard jointly by the Appropriations and the Ways and Means committees, but a hearing date had not been set as of Thursday.
Moore's bills have so far drawn more attention for what they would not fund, than for what they would. The governor's education plan calls for a four-year delay in funding for teacher 'collaborative time' — out-of-classroom time when teachers plan, get training, work individually with students and more. But that will require the hiring of more teachers to free up classroom time.
The Blueprint currently calls for collaborative time funding to begin next year, at a cost of $163 per student, growing annually until it reaches $1,527 per pupil by fiscal 2033. Moore's bill would maintain the funding levels, but delay them for four years, but push the starting date back to fiscal 2030, with the program running through fiscal 2037.
The pause, as administration officials call it, is due to a statewide teacher shortage.
While teachers and some state lawmakers have come out against the delay in collaborative time funding, Wright and Isiah 'Ike' Leggett, the chair of the Accountability and Implementation Board overseeing implementation of the Blueprint, both say a pause makes sense. The AIB voted last month to recommend a pause in collaborative time.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Leggett noted Thursday that at least 12,000 more teachers would be needed to implement collaborative time next school year, a number that doesn't include the 6,000 teachers who are currently working with a conditional license.
'That's a huge challenge. This plan cannot be implemented as intended given those numbers,' Leggett said to the committee. 'There is no plan that I have seen that will change these numbers overnight.'
But education department officials did disagree with one cut that is in both the governor's plan and the legislative analyst's recommendation — the reduction in funding for the Concentration of Poverty Grant program. The state has more than 700 schools designated as community schools, which would receive concentration in poverty grants, based on the number of students who receive free and reduced-price meals.
The analyst's report would cut $1 million from the budget to administer the grants while the governor's budget would freeze funding for community schools, a cut the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland doesn't support.
The education department's overall budget is proposed to increase by nearly $15 million, or 4%, to $388 million from this current fiscal year.
