State officials said last week that the implementation of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future would require difficult decisions at the local level as officials will have to prioritize how they want to spend education funding.
Buckingham Elementary School students eat lunch in the cafeteria on the first day of school in September.
Photo courtesy Worcester County Public Schools
Blueprint mandate will force ‘tough decisions’ on spending
By Charlene Sharpe, Associate Editor
State officials said last week that the implementation of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future would require difficult decisions at the local level as officials will have to prioritize how they want to spend education funding.
In a virtual meeting on Feb. 20, members of the state’s Accountability and Implementation Board discussed implementation of the state’s mandatory comprehensive education reform plan with the Worcester County Commissioners and the Worcester County Board of Education. The Blueprint will require local school systems to increase teacher salaries and expand dual enrollment offerings, among a variety of other changes meant to improve education in Maryland.
“It’s not going to be business as usual,” AIB Chairman Ike Leggett said. “You’re not going to be able to fund all the things people have wanted in the past.”
Leggett told Worcester County officials that with Maryland students ranking 40th and 43rd nationwide in reading and math, state leaders felt the need to spent years developing a plan to overhaul the state’s education system. AIB Vice Chairman Britt Kirwan, who led that effort, said a massive change was needed.
“We’re going to have our challenges,” he said.
Rachel Hise, AIB’s executive director, outlined the pillars of the Blueprint and how it was to be funded. While the county allocated $100 million in Maintenance of Effort (MOE) funding for education last year, the new local share for the Blueprint is only $73 million. Under the Blueprint, local jurisdictions must fund the local share or MOE, whichever amount is greater.
Hise stressed that some of what school systems funded now was not included in the Blueprint.
“There are things not in the Blueprint that communities may value,” she said.
Commissioner Chip Bertino asked if those figures indicated that $73 million should be sufficient to cover the needs of the Blueprint. She said that figure didn’t include transportation or things like band or athletics.
Bertino asked how county government would know if the board of education was meeting Blueprint mandates and whether there was a transparent way to know they were being met from a financial standpoint.
“You don’t have that now?” Leggett asked.
Bertino said the county didn’t have the level of detail that would effectively help officials understand what was going on.
“Other county governments are experiencing the same opportunities for improvement we are,” Bertino said.
Leggett said it was the AIB’s expectation that everything associated with the Blueprint was transparent.
“We’re talking here about tax dollars the public’s paying for,” he said.
Bertino asked about zero-based budgeting, the process of starting a budget from zero rather than with the budget figure from the previous year. Leggett said the way he did it, a budget would start from ground zero and he would determine the most important priorities and allocate funding to them. If there isn’t enough funding for everything on the list, the decision has to be made to add more resources or to eliminate something on the list. Leggett said he found zero based budgeting helpful but that budgeting decisions would have to be made at the local level.
Kirwan said local school systems could get assistance from the state during Blueprint implementation through consultants AIB would be providing.
“These are individuals who can bring strategic thinking to make the kind of adjustments you’re talking about,” he said.
According to Leggett, transparency and collaboration will be needed through the process.
“You should have access to and the ability to look at everything utilizing taxpayer dollars,” he said. “That transparency is a must.”
He acknowledged that putting the Blueprint initiatives in place would require big changes from school systems but that drastic change was needed to improve education statewide.
“The Blueprint will not do everything people may want to do at the local level,” he said. “There will be some difficult decisions.”
School board member Jon Andes, the county’s former superintendent, said Worcester County was considered a wealthy jurisdiction by the state and as a result didn’t receive sufficient funding. He said the county was set to receive $1.4 million—about $200 a pupil—to implement the Blueprint.
“We need more state funding to get the job done,” he said, adding that things like the salary increase the Blueprint demanded for teachers with National Board Certification cost more than the state was providing. “We need to make a cut somewhere else to pay that. In order to implement the Blueprint with fidelity, we’re going to need more state dollars.”
Andes maintained that Worcester County already supported many of the Blueprint values and was the top performing school system in the state. He pointed out that the low-ranking stats Leggett shared at the beginning of the meeting were from the National Assessment of Education Progress, an assessment that isn’t based on results from individual students or schools.
“It’s a barometer not a census test,” he said.
Hise said that in counties where the local share was less than MOE, there would be funding challenges because the money was already being spent on certain things.
“It is a challenge to rethink how you’re using your resources,” she said, adding that the goal would be to have local officials agree on a set of priorities. “We are going to be providing targeted technical assistance to do that deeper dive. We really would encourage Worcester County to participate.”
Todd Ferrante, president of the school board, asked if the timeline for Blueprint implementation could be delayed.
“That’d be a question we’d have to take up with the General Assembly,” Leggett said.
At a board of education meeting later Tuesday afternoon, Worcester County Public Schools officials said the support services the AIB referenced during the virtual meeting were not yet available.
“This is something brand new that’s getting ready to be offered,” said Annette Wallace, the school system’s chief safety and academic officer for grades 9-12. Other officials said the school system wouldn’t be able to apply for the assistance until July 1.
“Certainly, I’m going to reach out to that consultant,” Chief Financial Officer Vince Tolbert said.
Wallace also brought up the comments made about transparency. She said one of the entire pillars of the Blueprint was accountability and transparency.
“That seemed to be left out today when the question was asked very clearly,” she said. “I did want to make that clear to the board and public. I’m not sure why that was left out when the question was asked.”
She added that there was already accountability within the school system.
“When we talk about accountability, Worcester County Public Schools now, thanks to the board’s leadership and foresight, every expenditure that you all approve every single month is on our website,” she said. “To make any suggestion about a lack of transparency or accountability, if I go to the bathroom and it costs me 25 cents to go to the bathroom, like in Europe when you have to pay a quarter to go in, you’d see it. It would be a 25-cent expense and it would say restroom. Everything is there everything is accounted for everything is very transparent.”
School board member Katie Addis brought up Leggett’s comments about zero-based budgeting and asked if that was something the school system could explore. Tolbert indicated it would be difficult for a school system to do.
“For some companies it does make sense,” he said. “I don’t think it makes as much sense for a school system.”
Addis said maybe it was something the school system could do every five or 10 years.
“The fact you’d be doing that type of process would be beneficial to the financial department as well as the taxpayers that see things are being looked at,” she said.