Use Hogan’s veto to improve education bill

Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of the landmark Blueprint for Maryland’s Future bill to reform public schools is not as big a deal and blow as it may appear.

The veto was anticipated. Even prior to the coronavirus crisis, the governor had condemned the work of the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, known as the Kirwan Commission, and threatened to veto any legislation based on its recommendations. And it is very likely that the General Assembly will override the veto anyway.

However, the Blueprint was in a different kind of danger before the veto. The steep decline in state revenues as a result of COVID-19 almost certainly will curtail the increased funding needed to carry out the sweeping Blueprint initiatives. Significant revisions in the Blueprint seemed inevitable, veto or not.

This is a scary prospect. The Blueprint — which took three years of deliberations by the Kirwan Commission, of which I was a member — represents some delicate compromises.

Conservatives think the Blueprint costs too muchmoney. Manyliberals think it costs too little: a pending lawsuit alleges that Blueprint funding fails to satisfy the state constitutional mandate requiring equitable and adequate educational opportunity.

Another example of precarious political ground is the issue of accountability. The Blueprint calls for innovative and bold oversight of spending, but the oversight is likely to encounter resistance from state and local educators who wield great influence in the legislative process and are fearful of interference in their work.

And there’s one more gaping uncertainty in the Blueprint’s future. Largely because of Gov. Hogan’s opposition, the Blueprint funding so far — even before the current state fiscal crisis — only covers a modest down payment through 2025 on its eventual $4 billion per year costs in 2030 (or later). There’s no plan for how the state would pay the remainder of the costs after 2025. The gubernatorial election in 2022 will be a crucial factor but under any foreseeable circumstances, the political debates over the Blueprint will be with us for many years, and some adjustments are inevitable.

I’m not sure anyone has a crystal ball, but some good things can come out of these further deliberations. First and foremost, the Blueprint can and must be strengthened to provide what I call an “adequacy safety net” for the most at-risk students.

The Blueprint is an unprecedented accomplishment which I support. It has the potential to catapult Maryland public schools from mediocrity to the top in the U.S., enabling all our students to achieve world-class standards.

But it’s not perfect. And it seriously underestimated the cost of enabling our students to achieve significant progress

from our current failing system to a transformed one. The transition will take longer than the 2030 goal that the Kirwan Commission originally envisioned. Even funding aside, imposing the Blueprint’s complex interdependent parts on a sluggish education bureaucracy is sure to cause some delays. And now because of the pandemic, further delays are inescapable.

What then will happen to our most at-risk students, who are disproportionately poor and of color, in the interim? Their jeopardy is increasing every day. They are clearly suffering the most as schools now struggle to provide meager stopgap instruction.

Their dire plight must be the highest priority when legislators sweat the details of revisions to the Blueprint. Most specifically, any available Blueprint funding should be reallocated to provide intensive interventions for struggling learners in the early grades. For example, consider the worthy but long-term goal of elevating teacher salaries to the level of other professions: it seems probable that beleaguered teachers themselves (who would still get regular raises) would prefer the funding be spent now for emergency classroom relief, such as smaller class sizes, tutoring and summer school for their most vulnerable students.

At the same time, legislators should seek to assure that all other possible funding sources are targeted for similar purposes. These should include the Education Stabilization Fund in the federal stimulus CARES Act which provides around $200 million to Maryland for K-12 schools, plus some additional emergency education funding available to the governor.

So yes, Governor Hogan acted irresponsibly in vetoing the Blueprint bill. But in the political negotiations sure to follow, we should seize the moment. We can strengthen the Blueprint now and for the years ahead. We just need the political will.

during the transition