Hiring and developing staff continues to be one of the biggest challenges in Carroll County Public Schools’ implementation of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, according to a new plan outlining the county’s progress. Funding for additional teachers and instructional resources is expected to be the county’s biggest hurdle.
The Blueprint, a multibillion-dollar state law passed in 2021, fundamentally aims to send more resources to students who need them — such as those living in high concentrations of poverty. It is designed to make Maryland’s schools among the highest performing in the country by incorporating a $60,000 starting salary for new teachers, providing more time for teachers to plan lessons and develop skills outside the classroom, allowing high school students to enroll in unlimited community college classes at no charge to them or their family, and offering universal prekindergarten for 3-year-olds, among other initiatives.
Each of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions submitted an updated implementation plan to the state’s accountability board last month, outlining plans and challenges to put in place Blueprint mandates.
Carroll’s public school system budget is misaligned with the Blueprint, according to the county’s plan, which echoes Superintendent Cynthia McCabe’s message to the community at a series of town hall meetings. It is estimated that the Blueprint will require Carroll County to spend $40 million on compensatory education students, which includes those who receive free or reduced-price meals. Meanwhile, the system will exceed the Blueprint-required special education spending minimum by $14.6 million, and the system tops the current state-required special education spending minimum by $25 million in fiscal 2024.
The bulk of Carroll County’s operating budget (42.06%) goes to public schools. In fiscal 2025, the school system is slated to receive a total of $13 million more than the current budget. A $40 million increase to compensatory education support would represent around 10% of the school system’s current unrestricted operating budget.
The system would have to move around 470 full-time equivalent of teachers to schools with higher concentrations of poverty to fulfill the Blueprint’s mandate without a budgetary increase. Certain teachers and staff cannot be moved because they teach subjects that enable students to meet graduation requirements or because they serve specific student populations, such as special education teachers. As many as 1,000 of the school system’s workforce of 2,200 could be moved to achieve fiscal compliance with the compensatory education spending mandate, according to the county’s plan.
The system created 124 new positions to target behavioral health needs at the 14 schools with the highest concentration of compensatory education students last school year, using $11.3 million in new state compensatory education funding, according to the document.
The school system experienced, “a period of unprecedented, sustained enrollment decline,” from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2020, which resulted in a decreased operating budget despite annual increases from the county, according to the plan. The system navigated the decline in state funding by reducing its staff by 300 full-time equivalent employees and closing three schools. Among Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions, Carroll County now ranks last in terms of non-instructional staff, such as central office staff, which exacerbates the challenge of reallocating resources to meet new compensatory education spending requirements.
“Simply put, we do not have layers of supplemental staffing on which to turn to mitigate the tremendous impact of reallocation on our schools,” the plan states. “The shift in resources will be heavily focused on teachers.”
The school system also plans to increase opportunities for professional learning and development.
“Professional learning was identified as the primary challenge in our efforts at systemic transformation,” the document states. “Far too often professional learning in CCPS occurs as isolated ‘events’ rather than ongoing, continuous training for improvement. All pillars are affected by the lack of professional learning opportunities for staff, and the lack of time devoted to training has become a significant hurdle in developing our workforce. The ongoing development of our staff is essential given the increased difficulty in hiring high-quality staff and the increase in students who are entering school with needs for educational supports.”
Hiring initiatives
While the Blueprint requires a $60,000 minimum starting salary for teachers be in place by July 2026, Carroll County has complied with the mandate ahead of the 2024-2025 school year. A contract was ratified with the Carroll County Education Association at a monthly school board meeting on April 10. Superintendent McCabe said at the meeting that increasing teacher salaries ahead of the Blueprint mandate will address an ongoing teacher shortage and attract the best-qualified candidates.
“A new approach to collective bargaining was used to reach this agreement due to Blueprint requirements,” according to the plan. “Historically, negotiations between the BOE and CCEA negotiation teams were based on traditional/positional bargaining. That process is based on each party selecting a representative team along with a lead negotiator for each. The lead negotiators usually do most of the talking during the scheduled negotiations meetings as they exchange formal proposals. While useful in past years, a hybrid process was necessary this year.”
This year’s hybrid-style bargaining drew from the traditional bargaining approach and an interest-based approach, which focuses on exploring collaboration on a narrow set of topics, according to the plan.
The system has also increased its recruitment budget by 150%, hired a permanent full-time recruitment specialist, and diversified advertising of all available positions to include job search websites, billboards, and radio ads. According to the document, 268 certified employees were hired between October 2022 and October 2023, which, “represents a significant increase.”
“The importance of reestablishing and nurturing relationships during traditional (face-to-face) recruitment events cannot be understated,” the plan states. “Recruiting and hiring the very best teachers and staff remains a top priority and a tremendous challenge, especially in critical shortage content areas.”
Critical shortage areas include special education, secondary mathematics, and science. According to the plan, there is also a shortage of teachers who are male, and who are minorities.
The Blueprint also aims to diversify Maryland’s teacher workforce. According to the plan, Carroll’s school system increased the number of recruitment events at historically Black colleges and universities and is collaborating with the NAACP to recruit staff.
