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June 21, 2025

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Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Kirwan Blueprint Funding Reform Needed by Laura Price

March 6, 2020 by Laura Price

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The Kirwan Blueprint bill is currently moving way too fast through the House before it moves next week to the Senate. After the “public-hearing” on February 17, about 65 amendments were offered. Most never saw the light of day as certain committee members made the decisions on which amendments were worthy of consideration. The vast majority were related to one of the five specific policy areas and some were related to funding. I will address the local funding requirement amendments.

I will reiterate what MACo’s position is regarding whether to split the costs of this additional layer of education funding. The total price tag adds an additional $6 billion per year by 2030 and the counties believe these new costs should be borne by the State. MACo’s statement says “The State of Maryland should live up to its constitutional obligation, stand behind its own ambitious recommendations, and provide State resources to implement the full costs of the Kirwan Blueprint plan….The Maryland Constitution’s requirement of ‘thorough and efficient’ public schools properly places this duty on the State…The far-reaching Kirwan plan is a continuation of this State requirement.”

There are two primary reasons for this position. One, if legislators believe that this is a good idea, and they are the ones voting on the plan, they should not pass another unfunded mandate onto the County governments. The second is that the State has more flexibility on raising revenues and/or making adjustments within the State budget to pay for this new level of education costs. Counties only have property and income taxes and most are maxed out at 3.2% on income taxes, leaving only property tax, thereby forcing the local elected officials to raise rates significantly with no local control.

Since there was no amendment offered, it’s obvious that the State still expects the counties to pick up a significant share of these new costs. While most have heard that the split was $2.8 billion for the State and $1.2 billion for the Counties, that is a bit misleading. Fiscal year 2020 funding for all counties is $6.69 billion (51.8%) and state share is $6.23 billion (48.2%), so the locals are already funding $464 million more than the State. The bill as introduced (with an inflation factor of 23% that DLS has used), counties would be funding a total of over $9.2 billion in FY30. That is an actual increase in local spending of $2.5 billion, which is inclusive of the current Maintenance of Effort (MOE) law. It is also why the numbers that keep getting reported of $1.2 billion appear distorted and understated.

The funding amendments that were offered were to accomplish two things. First, the massive local increase on Baltimore City and Prince George’s County has been widely reported and something in the formula had to change in order to offer those jurisdictions relief. As originally drafted, the “Local Share Relief” to 12 counties was $431 million with $375 going to just those two jurisdictions.

The second was a technical fix to the Funding Floors for seven counties. Notwithstanding the wealth formula, each county receives 15% funding on the base per pupil and 40% funding on a Special Education, English Language Learner or Concentration of Poverty. When the bill was initially introduced, this had not been factored in and the local share was overstated. An amendment was needed to adjust the calculation because it had been double counted and ended up with the local + state being greater than the total formula funding required. This amendment was NOT the State granting relief to those seven counties, it was to correct a mathematical ERROR.

The first amendment was to grant relief to 12 counties and the second was to fix the error. Unfortunately, these got combined and the title of the amendment is “Net Local Share Relief.” Why does this concern me and several other counties who are supposedly wealthy? Because, legislators will say that they “fixed” us and granted us a reduction. That really is inaccurate. Our reasoning and that of several legislators is that the “wealth formula” does not accurately reflect the actual demographics and economy of a jurisdiction. One major factor that is not considered in any way is the Median Household Income. The tables below show examples of the education wealth formula versus the median income ranking as compared to the State average:

This illustrates that no funding formula really works. There are many other factors that comprise a county’s “wealth,” not just property value + net taxable income divided by the number of children in the school system. Until you account for many different factors, it would be unfair to classify a county wealthy, poor or somewhere in between. The true wealth of a county has very little to do with how many kids we educate and everything to do with the quality of jobs, incomes, and demographics of who we serve. What we really need is to amend this wealth formula that fits no one and add a factor that accounts for median household income. That would be a good start.

Laura Price is on the Board of Directors of MACo, Chair of Budget and Tax, Talbot’s legislative liaison and member of the Talbot County Council.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Op-Ed Tagged With: Kirwan

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Letters to Editor

  1. Alan Boisvert says

    March 6, 2020 at 8:10 PM

    Laura, thank you again for keeping us informed on Kirwan. Could you please publish or somehow make available a list of names and email addresses of the folks in the State Legislature who are pushing this agenda without due consideration of the affects on the counties. Much appreciated.

    • Laura Price says

      March 8, 2020 at 2:41 PM

      In the Senate EHE Committee tomorrow. Already passed the House on Friday.

      https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/05sen/html/com/02eco.html

      Paul G. Pinsky, Chair (410) 841-3155, (301) 858-3155
      Cheryl C. Kagan, Vice-Chair (410) 841-3134, (301) 858-3134
      John D. (Jack) Bailey
      Mary Beth Carozza
      Arthur Ellis
      Jason C. Gallion
      Katie Fry Hester
      Clarence K. Lam
      Obie Patterson
      Bryan W. Simonaire
      Mary L. Washington

      Budget & Tax Senate Committee
      https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/05sen/html/com/01bud.html

      Guy J. Guzzone, Chair (410) 841-3572, (301) 858-3572
      James C. Rosapepe, Vice-Chair (410) 841-3141, (301) 858-3141
      Adelaide C. Eckardt
      George C. Edwards
      Sarah K. Elfreth
      Melony G. Griffith
      Nancy J. King
      Cory V. McCray
      Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr.
      Douglas J. J. Peters
      Johnny Ray Salling
      Andrew A. Serafini
      Craig J. Zucker

  2. Laura Price says

    March 8, 2020 at 1:19 PM

    Authors Update:

    Todays’ Star Democrat was the perfect example of why Kirwan and the wealth formula are not going to work. Front page article 1 is the recap of the House passing the Blueprint Education bill. Proponents argue that it was studied for three years and the formulas and amounts to spend per pupil will solve all the problems of English Language Learners, Special Ed and Concentrations of Poverty. It increases teacher salaries and will add thousands of teachers to address all these concerns. Opponents say it is so costly and there is no funding source to pay for it other than massive increases in taxes.

    Article 2 is the Talbot County School Board budget request. There is a record ask of over $46 million dollars just from the local share (74%) and the State share is $15.6 million (26%). The Kirwan 10-year plan of what the additional costs are for Talbot County local share are: FY22 – $44.8 million, FY23 – $47.2 million, FY24 – $49.2 million, FY25 – $51.4 million and increasing rapidly to $69.5 million by FY30.

    How can our school board and others around the State ask for more than what the Kirwan Commission recommendations are? And ask for more that what is required years into the future? The Legislature made virtually no amendments to the plan and are telling us what we MUST spend, so it must be the right amount, correct?

    My Op-Ed goes on to explain the flaws in the wealth formula. Regardless of what jurisdiction you are from, reading these three articles together should give everyone the perspective they need and raise some serious questions. The same questions that the County elected officials have been asking for years.

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