Signs in support of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future at a Feb. 10 rally outside the State House. Proposals to rein in parts of the plan were rejected Friday by a House committee in the first of what is likely to be many votes on the issue this session. (File photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
And so it begins…
The House Appropriations Committee on Friday reinstated many of the cuts proposed by Gov. Wes Moore (D) to the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s multiyear, multbillion-dollar education reform plan.
Friday’s vote was the first step in what is likely to be a long — and what has been a long-expected — clash between the House, the Senate and the Moore administration over what parts of the state’s signature education plan can be retained in the face of a projected $3 billion gap in the fiscal 2026 budget.
Moore’s House Bill 504, the Excellence in Maryland Public Schools Act, proposed delaying funding for community schools, those schools with high concentrations of low-income students. He also proposed a delay in implementation of “collaborative time” – a plan to boost teaching ranks so that teachers could spend less time in the classroom and more time on planning, training, working with students out of class, and more.
In 10 minutes of work Friday, the Appropriations Committee kept the community schools and collaborative time funding on track. It also voted to keep the Academic Excellence Fund, which can accept private-sector donations for a grant fund used by local school systems, and to give local school systems flexibility in when they start the collaborative time, among other changes.
Moore’s bill to rein in Blueprint school reform plan draws fire at hearing
The amended bill passed on party lines, with all Democrats voting for it and all Republican voting against it except Del. Joshua Stonko (R-Carroll), who did not vote after explaining the “complexity … in the personal views I have and the impact on Carroll County.”
Stonko, who has referred to the “Blueprint to Bankrupt Maryland’s Future,” is opposed to the costly collaborative time proposal, but noted that doing away with it now could have the effect of leading to class sizes of upwards of 50 students to one teacher in parts of Carroll County. It would also lead to the loss of reading, math and media specialists in those schools.
“This is a really complex bill for me because I’m trying to think about my general view on budget and tax and spend and all of those issues, and then the impact to my jurisdiction and thinking through those,” Stonko said before the vote. “I may continue to think about this for another day, and we’ll see on that context, but I just wanted to say for my constituency it’s a really complicated bill for Carroll County.”
After the vote, Del. Ben Barnes (D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel), the chair of the Appropriations Committee, thanked Moore for the bill that he said included innovative “policy ideas … [that] will certainly strengthen the Blueprint and the intent of the original Blueprint.” Barnes said those ideas were bolstered by the committee amendments that make the administration’s proposals “even stronger.”
But that’s not the last word on the bill, even in the House. HB504 was jointly assigned to Appropriations and to the Ways and Means Committee, which held a joint hearing with Appropriations on the bill but has yet to announce a vote.
Once the bill gets out of the House, it goes to the Senate, where leaders in public have been more in line with the administration on the need to rein in the Blueprint for now in the face of the state’s mounting budget problems.
The Senate version of the bill was also jointly assigned, to the Budget and Taxation Committee and the Education, Energy and the Environment Committee. Those two committees were also part of the joint hearing with the two House committees on the bill last week, but neither Senate panel has announced a voting session on the measure.
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