Meeting start: 6:00PM
- What is MSEA
- Maryland State Educator’s Association
- 75,000 education worker members
- Represents all workers in a school excluding bosses
- 39 local affiliates in 23 counties
- MSEA staff support these local affiliates/county unions with advocacy and organizing
- With pro-public education policies
- Lauren’s team, the government relations team, tracks legislation and regulations and advocates on their behalf
- The blueprint for MD’s future
- history
- Commission founded in 2016
- Focus on how to reform public education
- Passed md gen assembly 2019–2020
- Hogan vetoed
- Veto overridden
- Hogan vetoed
- Commission founded in 2016
- 5 pillars:
- Early childhood education
- including pre-school
- High-quality and diverse teachers and leaders
- Build out the educator workforce and overcome teacher shortages
- College and career readiness
- for high school students
- More resources for student success
- For kids who go to school with high rates of poverty
- Governance and accountability (AIB)
- Ensuring there is oversight for the large program
- Early childhood education
- Highlights
- Efforts to expand pre-k
- Pre-k 3 for lower-income children
- Pre-k 4 for all students, regardless of income
- Incentives for teachers to get national board certification/additional certifications/more qualified
- Incentives for highly-qualified teachers to work in high-need schools
- More time for teachers to plan and collaborate during the school day
- Scholarships for aspiring educators
- Establishing high school and career pathways
- Dual enrollment
- Apprenticeships
- Investing in community schools; providing additional mental health supports
- Oversight by the AIB and state board of education
- Efforts to expand pre-k
- Funding
- Revised the funding formula
- Increased per-pupil funding
- Re-weighted for student supports (like english-learners, special ed resources, free/reduced school lunches)
- 3.8 billion invested in education in MD to 2031/2032
- Revised the funding formula
- Status
- State-portion of blueprint funded through fy2027
- It is localities that are short
- Full implementation of collaborative time frozen due to teacher shortages
- Pre-k delays also due to teacher shortage
- State-portion of blueprint funded through fy2027
- history
- Teacher shortage
- Background
- Shortage has been ongoing for a while
- Maryland doesn’t train enough teachers per capita (ongoing)
- Often imports from other states
- Maryland doesn’t train enough teachers per capita (ongoing)
- Worsened by covid
- Blueprint requires state to hire 25% more teachers
- Workforce is significantly less diverse than student body
- Increase in conditional (temporary) licenses
- Shortage has been ongoing for a while
- Strategies to combat shortages MSEA has advocated for
- TFfM scholarship (21)
- Grow your own educators programs (22)
- Paid student-teaching internships (23)
- Expanded licensure pathways (24)
- Background
- Banned books/censorship
- Freedom to read act in md
- Gives a fair chance to banned books
- Helps protect librarians from retaliation
- Continues to be an ongoing issue, nonetheless
- Public funds to public schools
- Concerns about public funding not reaching public schools, especially with the current administration
- “Vouchers” are just programs that redirect taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools
- Are not held to safety and academic requirements/testing
- Do not serve all students
- Boost program in MD accounts for 9 million dollars annually
- Is phased out
- The Big Beautiful Bill voucher program
- States need to opt in to program
- MD may not
- Creates tax incentives to donate to private school tuition
- States need to opt in to program
- Funding and the deficit
- Long-running since 2017
- Was obscured by covid-relief
- Further impacted by federal job layoffs
- May impact public education
- Long-running since 2017
- “We would not consider Gov. Hogan a friend to public education.”
- Q&A session
- Further discussion