MACo Associate Director Les Knapp testified in support of SB 189 before the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee on February 9.  The bill, sponsored by Senator Doug Peters, would make school construction planning and design costs eligible for State public school construction funding. Currently, planning and design costs are not considered costs eligible for State funding, meaning that they must be borne entirely by the counties and local school boards.  These costs can be considerable and occur at the beginning…

MACo Associate Director Les Knapp testified in opposition to HB 231 before the House Appropriations Committee on February 8.  The bill would create a Public Charter School Facility Revolving Loan Fund to lend money to public charter schools for facility construction or maintenance.  The State Board of Education would evaluate requests for loans and determine repayment arrangements. Mr. Knapp objected to the bill for two reasons:  (1) the bill requires the Governor to provide the fund…

MACo Associate Director Les Knapp testified in support of and offered an amendment to HB 86, which was heard by the House Appropriations Committee on February 8.  The bill would authorize the State to issue $15.9 million in Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZABs).  The money would be distributed in accordance with the criteria of the Aging Schools Program, through competitive grants and the Breakthrough Center Program. Mr. Knapp expressed support for the QZAB funding, but stressed that replacing the use of…

A county panel testified Wednesday in support of SB 53, legislation to reform the waiver process for counties in jeopardy of missing the "maintenance of effort" (MOE) target set under state education law. Under this state law, a county failing to fund its schools with at least as much per pupil funding as the prior year may lose its incremental increase in state funds for the coming budget year. The waiver process, established in 1996,…

In a recent column hosted on the Governing Magazine website, author William Eggers promotes "A few promising approaches to finding cost savings without cutting student services." From the column: Begin by placing a greater emphasis on the correlation between education dollars and outcomes. Policymakers have tended to focus too much on inputs without paying enough attention to efficiency, or to ensuring that educational dollars are delivering value. Politicians often point to their generous funding as…

As published in today's Gazette, Three public employee unions from Montgomery County have written a letter to Governor O' Malley asking him and the state legislature to reconsider  a provision in the law, known as "maintenance of effort" which requires school systems to fund education at or above the same level as the prior year. The provision states that in order to qualify for increases in state education funding, counties must fund their school systems…

Following a recommendation from Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Andres Alonso, the City School Board approved the reorganization and restructuring of a number of underperforming schools Tuesday evening.  Under the City's "Expanding Great Options," an initiative to ensure that all students have great school options, schools throughout the City have merged and in some instances closed due to enrollment levels, school climates and failing scores on standardized tests.   The City School Board has approved the closing…