Why Maryland school budgets are in turmoil — and what that means in classrooms

 From the Baltimore Banner, reporter Liz Bowie. Read the full story here.

For the past several years, Maryland schools have been anticipating a tsunami of new state and local money to wash over them, allowing them to add prekindergarten, raise teacher salaries and create support for high-poverty schools.

The reality is now here, and instead of euphoria, there’s shock, even from some educators who are deep in the weeds of the landmark education reform legislation.

Local school budgets are in turmoil, class sizes are rising or lowering, and superintendents are under pressure to figure it out fast. The general reaction: Wait, this is what the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future means?

The Blueprint requirements that have been most contentious this year force school systems to redirect money to specific schools with high-needs students — for instance, those with disabilities or who live in poverty. School systems were used to getting state money and generally spreading it out equally among the schools.

The re-prioritizing has been painful. Cecil County school Superintendent Jeffrey Lawson examined what that would mean for two schools in his county if he had to carry out the Blueprint requirements next school year. One is Bay View Elementary, where 66% of students are considered poor and 22% have special needs. The school would have seen a $1.3 million increase in its budget, but the second school, Rising Sun Middle School, which has significantly fewer students with special needs and poor students, would see its budget fall by $1.1 million.

In stark terms, that would mean adding 14 teachers to Bay View and taking 12 teachers from Rising Sun. Lawson said Bay View would likely have two teachers in a number of classrooms, since there aren’t 14 additional classrooms in the school. The student-to-teacher ratio at Bay View would fall to concentrate attention on students who need it the most. At Rising Sun, student class sizes might rise to 35 to 40 students per teacher, he said.