The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation Board held a special online meeting Jan. 10. Screenshot.
Amid growing calls for revisions to the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the board overseeing implementation of the education reform plan voted unanimously Friday to recommend relaxing a section that calls for teachers to have more planning time.
The motion by the Accountability and Implementation Board (AIB) said the timeline for expanding so-called “collaborative time” for teachers needs to be extended because of a current teacher shortage: There are simply not enough teachers to free up classroom time and allow for more collaborative time.
Teachers currently spend about 80% of their time in the classroom and 20% in individual planning time. The Blueprint says that within the next eight years, the out-of-class time shoud expand to 40% of a teacher’s day, to give teachers more time for training, analyzing student data, identifying students who may need help and spending time, one on one or in groups, to get students back on track.
But given the shortage of certified teachers in the state, it is “not feasible to hire the additional teachers in the near-term to implement collaborative time on the current 8-year timeline,” the resolution said.
“The current condition in our schools is that we don’t have enough certified teachers for our existing needs,” said AIB Executive Director Rachel Hise. “That really raises the question of the ability for the LEAs [local education agencies] to be able to begin implementing this piece of the Blueprint starting in the next school year.”
Hise said the state would need to hire an additional 25% more teachers — 12,000 to 15,000 — to meet the eight-year timeline for the expansion of collaborative time.
County school leaders say changes needed to the Blueprint education reform plan
The state currently has about another 6,000 teachers with conditional certification, which means they have a bachelor’s degree but have not completed the requirements for a professional teacher’s license. And there are about 2,000 teacher vacancies statewide, she said, up from about 1,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Local school boards are currently required to submit plans to the AIB by July 1 on how they plan to meet the eight-year timeline to implement the collaborative time requirement. It did not set a new timeline Friday: Although the board manages the Blueprint plan, any changes to the Blueprint law would have to be made by the General Assembly, which convened Wednesday.
Some state officials, including Gov. Wes Moore (D), have said adjustments to the Blueprint may need to be made in order to help balance a nearly $3 billion budget deficit.
Sen. President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) has said “everything is on the table” as the state grapples with the deficit. But he has been careful to point out that the Blueprint is currently funded through 2027, and any changes now might result in an extension of the plan, but would not be a reduction of the overall goals.
Blueprint board member Justin Robinson, a teacher in Prince George’s County, said an “image issue” of the teaching profession has been created by state and local policies.
“I’m hopeful that when we say things like, ‘Everything’s on the table,’ [we] want to think about all different ways that we can address the teacher shortage,” he said.
Two financial incentives are included in the Blueprint to try and boost the teacher profession:
- Raising the minimum annual salary to $60,000 by July 1, 2026; and
- Paying an additional $10,000 in salary for teachers who achieve National Board Certification, and another $7,000 for those who teach at an “identified low-performing school.”
William “Brit” Kirwan, vice chair of the board and chancellor emeritus of the University System of Maryland, said a marketing campaign may be needed to showcase the teaching profession in Maryland.
“There are some very attractive things in Maryland in comparison to other states,” he said. “There’s the compensation issues, the career ladders and the promise of collaborative time, etc. We need a real marketing campaign it would seem to me.”
Meanwhile, the board will join the state Board of Education for a meeting Jan. 28 in Baltimore.
Two days later, the AIB is scheduled to conduct its regular online meeting, when it could finally approve Blueprint implementation plans for Baltimore County public schools. It is the last school district to win board approval for documents submitted in March that outlined challenges to implement the plan submitted, and follow-up documents filed two months later. The work is to be executed through fiscal year 2027.
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