5 ways to strengthen the Blueprint

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The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future holds tremendous potential to transform public education in our state. This potential is incredibly promising for Maryland as a whole, when we consider what the Blueprint’s improvements will actually mean for Maryland public schools and so many young students.

Who wouldn’t want to see the Blueprint succeed and Maryland public school students thrive?

Yet the pill in the jam is that when we read or tune in to daily news accounts, we encounter numerous concerns over actual implementation of the Blueprint and related worries over funding. We hear similar feedback when talking to dedicated local school board members throughout Maryland.

As Maryland’s 24 local school systems move forward in the Blueprint’s complex implementation phase, they are encountering often consistent needs for reasonable legislative “fixes” which would mean better and more achievable implementation successes and results.

The good news is there are several pragmatic, workable ways to amend existing Blueprint legislation in a way that directly helps education stakeholders throughout Maryland reach their collective goal of truly transforming public education in our state. Notably, such improvements can be done in a way that avoids harming or delaying Blueprint implementation efforts while meeting the specific needs which experienced local school board representatives have raised.

Here, then, are five concrete, realistic ways to strengthen the Blueprint:

First, amending the Blueprint law by reestablishing the Maintenance of Effort “escalator” to require increased local funding in certain jurisdictions would mean restoring an approach already proved successful in place between 2012 and 2023. This approach would require jurisdictions to increase local funding based on their level of education spending, relative to local wealth and in comparison to other jurisdictions.

Second, adding an inflation adjustment to the minimum Maintenance of Effort amount of local funding would translate into ensuring local funding is at least keeping pace with inflation (a requirement already in place for state funding, and one which makes realistic financial sense).

Third, removing foundation program funding from the Blueprint’s current 75% school-based funding allocation requirement would ensure that 75% of all funding for high-needs students (special education, English learner, and economically disadvantaged) continue to “follow the student” to the school – while also allowing flexibility for the foundation program (base amount of state funding) to be utilized on systemwide costs. Such costs could range from utilities and health care to transportation, retirement and maintenance efforts.

Fourth – and with the unique needs of rural and lower-population counties in mind – adding a population density-based adjustment to state funding for small school systems would provide targeted funding allocations to school systems with very low population densities – such as Dorchester, Garrett, Kent and Somerset County school systems.

Lastly, requiring state and local government cost-sharing for the salaries of local Blueprint implementation coordinators would have great, positive impact on ongoing implementation efforts and resulting successes.

It’s valid to ask what the price tag would be for these much-needed improvements. Here, we also offer concrete context for decision makers to consider:

• The state fiscal effect of these improvements is limited to the cost of the population density grants we propose, which would total $1M, and the Blueprint Implementation Coordinator salary grants, which would total $1.8M.
• Removing the foundation program from the school-based funding requirement has no impact on state or local government finances.
• Local government and school system fiscal effects would vary based on which jurisdictions would be subject to the Maintenance of Effort escalator, and depending on whether the inflation factor would increase a local funding amount above Maintenance of Effort by more than the amount the local government would have provided.

Given its enormous potential to affect the lives and futures of so many Marylanders, the groundbreaking Blueprint law is more than worth robust support.

But using what Maryland’s 24 school systems have encountered during the Blueprint’s early days, local school board members – the people with an ear closest to the ground on the realities of such a bold initiative — see and understand the pressing need for these sensible amendments to be enacted.

Doing so will mean building an innovative state school finance system that ensures the permanent balance of increases in state and local funding necessary for the Blueprint’s ultimate success – and actively equipping each local school system with the particular resources they most need to fulfill the Blueprint’s vision of making Maryland public schools the very best in the world.

The Blueprint itself can boldly transform, and decision-makers in Maryland have the very real opportunity and ability to do the same.

Michelle Corkadel is president of the Maryland Association of Boards of Education, a nonprofit representing Maryland’s 24 local boards of education.