A supplemental budget proposal released Tuesday by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan would send an additional $125 million to public schools primarily in Baltimore and Prince George’s County.
Critics had accused Hogan of shortchanging public schools by not including those funds, aimed at providing extra dollars for school districts with high concentrations of students from low-income families, in his initial budget proposal.
Education advocates and Democratic lawmakers contended that the dollars are required under the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a landmark 10-year education funding plan passed into law by the Maryland General Assembly last year over Hogan’s opposition.
Hogan, a Republican, included the additional $125 million in education funding under the Blueprint — $99 million for Baltimore schools and $26 million for Prince George’s County — as part of a $480 million supplemental budget proposal that also includes funding for a raft of other unrelated programs, including more than $230 million in Medicaid matching funds, an additional $50 million for a rural economic development initiative and $1.2 million to help recruit and retain staff at the state’s beleaguered Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The Blueprint education package — also sometimes known as Kirwan after the chairman of the commission that devised the proposal, former University System of Maryland Chancellor William “Brit” Kirwan — is a $3.8 billion effort to overhaul public education in Maryland over the next decade.
Hogan and many Republican lawmakers had opposed the package largely because of the substantial price tag.
Hogan had touted his initial budget proposal as providing “record” funding for K-12 education even without the disputed Blueprint dollars. But the governor’s office contended state law doesn’t require the governor to fund the disputed $125 million “Education Effort Adjustment” program.
Maryland law gives the governor broad power over setting the state’s annual budget beyond mandatory spending on existing programs. Lawmakers can trim a governor’s proposed budget or sometimes shift dollars around, but are generally prohibited from adding funding beyond what the governor proposed.
Hogan’s decision to leave out the $125 million Education Effort Adjustment funding in his initial budget proposal angered leading Democratic state lawmakers, including House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, who said last month that Hogan “continues to undermine” the Blueprint’s efforts to improve public schools.
Jones, Senate President Bill Ferguson and other Democrats welcomed Hogan’s decision to include those dollars in Tuesday’s supplemental budget proposal, crediting the governor’s move to persistent lobbying from top lawmakers.
Strong Schools Maryland, an advocacy group that has championed the Blueprint, cheered Hogan’s decision to “relent” over the funding dispute in a statement and said that “fully funding” the Blueprint “is the first step to creating … world-class public schools for all students” in the state.
The Maryland Alliance for Racial Equity in Education, an advocacy group that criticized Hogan for leaving out the $125 million and noted that Baltimore and Prince George’s public schools have large numbers of students of color, credited Hogan’s move to add the funding to “relentless public pressure” and said the group applauds “every advocate, ally, policymaker, parent and student who spoke out in support of Black and brown student education.”
Baltimore Sun staff reporter Lillian Reed contributed to this article.
