The Department of Legislative Services, partially at the request of local leaders, have developed an updated set of county-by-county cost projections for the multi-year Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education initiative.
The framework of the Blueprint program was to envision a series of school needs, based on facets of the school population, and apportion the costs of those programs between the State and county budgets as a function of relative local wealth.
Since its enactment in 2019 and 2020, many components of the program, and elements in the labor and materials markets, have changed as well. Further, student enrollment was jarred by the COVID pandemic, and in some cases has not rebounded to the previous projections.
The last analysis in county cost forecasts had been provided in early 2022, based on 2021 data.
In this 2025 update, the legislative staff make projections for each county’s required Blueprint obligations through FY 2034. The table at right (excerpted from the short DLS report) shows one version of this analysis – one that assumes that counties fund their required minimum amounts, but are unable to fund added amounts that would trigger an increase under the pre-Blueprint “maintenance of effort” requirement that remains in law, in addition to the “local share” funding amount required by the Blueprint law.
The forecast illustrates that mandated county funding to schools is slated to increase by nearly $1.5 billion over the duration of the forecast. That figure, again, represents an absolute minimum – even while school systems are currently seeking large increases to meet the programmatic goals of the Blueprint law, despite the State funding remaining pinned to the Kirwan Commission data and projections from 2018 and earlier.
State funding for the Blueprint continues to be drawn from the segregated Education Trust Fund, but will become a year-to-year component of State general funds as soon as FY 2028.
The February 2025 revised county funding projections are available online: DLS Local Appropriation Analysis – February 2025
