#MACoCon Recap: The Blueprint Beat Goes On…

As implementation continues, county and school leaders say the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is revealing growing gaps between statewide policy design and local fiscal and operational realities.

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future was built as a bold, statewide commitment to improving educational outcomes for every student. But as county leaders and school system officials made clear during MACo’s Winter Conference panel, “The Blueprint Beat Goes On…,“ translating a uniform funding formula into real-world success looks very different across Maryland’s diverse communities.

Moderated by Senator Mary Beth Carozza, the discussion brought together fiscal and education leaders from Carroll, Harford, Dorchester, and Frederick counties to explore how the Blueprint’s design interacts, and sometimes clashes, with local capacity and on-the-ground realities. While panelists emphasized strong support for the Blueprint’s goals, they also highlighted growing misalignments that counties and school systems are navigating daily.

Katie Ridgway, Chief of Staff for Harford County Public Schools, emphasized that while the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is producing real academic and workforce gains, including growth in youth apprenticeships and higher AP pass rates, its foundation formula does not reflect key local cost drivers. Ridgway highlighted significant gaps in funding for special education, as well as the exclusion of transportation, safety and security, and transparent class size considerations, creating structural misalignments that leave local systems absorbing millions in unfunded costs even as they deliver strong results.

Dr. Jymil Thompson, Superintendent of Dorchester County Public Schools, echoed support for the Blueprint’s goals while detailing how implementation challenges look in a smaller, rural district. Dr. Thompson pointed to rapid PreK expansion and leading Grade 3 ELA gains as evidence of progress. He noted that inadequate funding for special education and school construction, along with the administrative burden of minimum funding requirements, strains district capacity. Dr. Thompson underscored that strong community partnerships have been essential to translating Blueprint policy into tangible outcomes, reinforcing the need for flexibility that accounts for local context.

Janice Spiegel, Special Projects Manager for Frederick County’s Budget Office, focused on the challenges of implementing the Blueprint in a fast-growing county like Frederick, where enrollment growth is colliding with ambitious state expectations. Spiegel described the difficulty of funding the infrastructure needed to expand pre-kindergarten and scale career and technical education programs while growth continues unabated. To keep pace, Frederick County is forward-funding significant numbers of school construction and renovation projects without a guaranteed timeline or certainty of state reimbursement. That risk has grown as the state’s share of school construction funding has steadily declined over time, now averaging roughly a three-to-one local-to-state contribution ratio.

Ted Zaleski, Director of Management and Budget at Carroll County, underscored how the Blueprint’s one-size-fits-all mandates can break down in smaller or differently structured systems. In Carroll County, efforts to strictly comply with funding requirements produced unintended consequences, including class sizes ballooning to as many as 42 students in some schools. Even after the county overfunded the school system by approximately $40 million, Zaleski noted, funding still fell short of what was needed to meet both the Blueprint’s mandates and local expectations for classroom conditions.

Throughout the session, panelists stressed that counties and school systems are not pushing back against the Blueprint’s vision. Rather, they are grappling with how to implement a complex reform in environments marked by limited fiscal flexibility and rising costs. The discussion reinforced that achieving the Blueprint’s long-term goals will require continued recalibration, realistic funding assumptions, and sustained collaboration between state and local leaders to ensure policy ambition aligns with operational reality.

Title: The Blueprint Beat Goes On…

Speakers:

  • Ted Zaleski, Director, Management and Budget, Carroll County
  • Katie Ridgway, Chief of Staff, Harford County Public Schools
  • Jymil Thompson, Superintendent, Dorchester County Public Schools
  • Janice Spiegel, Special Projects Manager, Budget Office, Frederick County

Moderator: The Honorable Mary Beth Carozza, Maryland Senate

More about MACo’s Winter Conference: