Providing a quality education for students in public schools is a goal shared by public officials throughout Maryland. State funding laws intended to encourage education spending, however, may also discourage it.

State “maintenance of effort” laws require a county to provide the same amount of education funding or more on a per-pupil basis each year. On a student-by-student basis, funding is never to decline.

Maintenance of effort can discourage additional investment, especially during a faltering economic recovery, when future revenues are uncertain.

A county with extra revenue one year might be hesitant to commit it to schools — that commitment would be tantamount to creating a new ongoing annual funding obligation.

A legal provision called nonrecurring costs, however, allow county governments provide one-time school funding for one-time education costs without triggering perpetual mandates.

On average fewer than eight counties per year take advantage of this education budgeting tool.

Not all education costs are annually recurring per-student costs. One-time education expenses might include costs to:

• build new computer laboratories;
• make technology enhancements;
• start-up new instructional programs; or
• purchase books for a school library

There is a mechanism for appropriately excluding these one-time education costs from the maintenance of effort calculation. Counties must have special approval to do so, however.

A county must submit an application to exclude certain costs to the State Board for their approval before March 31 of each year.