The 2025 General Assembly
The State Budget: Fairness and Progress for All Marylanders
MSEA Members Are Fighting to Fund Maryland Public Schools
Note: This article was published in ActionLine before the governor’s budget was released and a number of the below details are now more specific. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook and don’t miss our Up The Street newsletter for weekly recaps of MSEA’s progress on our pro-public education legislative agenda in the General Assembly.
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With a $3 billion budget shortfall facing Maryland, state leaders have said that “everything is on the table” to deal with the budget crisis and that school funding could be a target for cuts. Here are the red lines for MSEA in any budget solution:
NO LAYOFFS.
Educators are already facing shortages across the state, we can’t dig an even deeper hole that will harm our students.
NO SALARY CUTS. Thanks to the Blueprint, we’ve see real progress in salaries, including a15% increase in average certificated salaries since 2019, $60,000 starting salaries for teachers across the state,substantial incentives for National Board Certification, and more. We can’t balance the budget on the backs of the salaries we deserve.
PIPELINE IMPROVEMENTS. We need to do more to improve the educator pipeline and erase educator shortages. A minimum starting salary for education support professionals,Grow Your Own program expansions,and more support to early career educators can all make a difference.
FAIR TAX REFORM TO SUSTAINABLY FUND OUR SCHOOLS. We need a fairer tax code that asks more of the wealthiest businesses and individuals among us and less of middle class Marylanders.
NO CUTS TO EXPECTED FUNDING INCREASES TO SPECIAL EDUCATION, MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS, OR STUDENTS IN POVERTY.
There has been talk of temporarily delaying programs that depend on full staffing, like increased collaborative time. While that has some logic to it, because of how the funding formulas are written, a pause could impact expected funding increases for students receiving special education services, multilingual learners, and students in poverty.
The Blueprint envisioned hiring upwards of 10,000 more teachers over and above current full staffing levels in order to increase by roughly 20% the time that teachers have to collaborate and plan. But with the educator shortage continuing to plague school systems throughout the state, hiring above current staffing levels isn’t feasible while shortages can’t even be eliminated.
However, the pause in funding could negatively impact students in poverty, multilingual learners, and students receiving special education services to the tune of trimming expected increases by $1 billion in school funding over the next four years.
Why? Because collaborative time is not a separate Blueprint line item, but is embedded in the foundation of the school funding formula. Funding levels for students receiving special education services, multilingual learners, and students in poverty are determined by multiplying the foundation amount by certain weights to deliver increased funding for these students who benefit from additional support and services.
Hold harmless grants would be a straightforward way to isolate the collaborative time pause from the rest of the formula and prevent it from negatively impacting these students.
“While it is reasonable to take more steps to sustainably end the existing educator shortage before
we can add staffing above current target levels, we must address the potentially deep funding impacts of a pause if the governor and state are to keep our commitment to students and the educators who serve them,” said MSEA President Paul Lemle. “It’s also time to take real action on fair tax reform that sustainably funds our schools and where more of the burden is on wealthy individuals and big corporations and less is on middle class Marylanders.”
WHAT WE’RE DOING ABOUT IT: The governor’s budget must be released by January 15. Once it’s released, we’ll know more about how public school funding could be impacted.
“It’s critical that the salary increases driven by the Blueprint continue, thatno layoffs take place, and that working conditions for all educators improve so that it is easier to not only end the shortages, but fundamentally growour profession,” added Lemle.
“We will push back hard against proposals that undercut our ability to do that. Our students deserve schools that are well-staffed and well-funded, and our communities depend on continued strong investments in our schools in the short and long term to support a well-educated citizenry and solid economic development. We can and must do better.”