School Funding

The scene in the colorful kindergarten room at City Neighbors Charter School in Northeast Baltimore seems straight out of the 1990s, when children didn't learn to read until first grade. The kids play make-believe and draw pictures on erasable boards, while a teacher stacks mats for napping. The organizers of City Neighbors made the choice to be different from the nearby public school because they wanted to give children more time to grow. But that autonomy came after a lot of work.

Republican former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. says he would chop $126 million in education funding that goes primarily to Baltimore and Montgomery and Prince George's counties and use the savings to offset a penny rollback to the state's sales tax. Ehrlich, who is campaigning to win back his old job, said Wednesday that he views spending the money as "discretionary" — a position similar to the one he held when in office. He would prefer to lower the state's sales tax to make it more competitive with Washington and Delaware and encourage consumer spending.

The ACLU is calling on state and city leaders to address a $2.8 billion need for renovations to Baltimore schools by developing a more creative and equitable way to fund school construction across Maryland. In a report to be released Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union says that despite state increases in school construction dollars in recent years, many city schools are still deteriorating and at current funding levels it would take 50 years for them to be in good condition.

For decades, Maryland lawmakers have built up public education through spending requirements that they've imposed on themselves and on local governments. But this year, more seriously than ever, the General Assembly is looking for ways to nip at school funding. There's broad agreement among lawmakers that the depth and length of the national economic downturn means the time has come to review this previously untouchable part of the budget - which accounts for about 20 percent of state spending.

Baltimore County schools Superintendent Joe A. Hairston has proposed a $1.2 billion operating budget for schools next year, a 4.4 percent increase over last year's spending, which would come from county revenues. Under the spending plan, the teachers would get their automatic step increases but no cost-of-living increase. Included in the budget is money to pay for air conditioning in several schools, an item that parents had lobbied for. About 54 percent of school funding comes from the county and 38 percent from the state; the rest is from federal sources.

Second of three parts   N o urban school system offers more hope than Baltimore's. Still, even if CEO Andrés Alonso stays the course (while fine-tuning it), city schools will need more resources. More must be done across the nation to fulfill, at long last, the legal and moral right of every poor child to a quality education. The best hope for the future lies in what I call a "New Education Federalism." Its foundation is a larger, more muscular role for the federal government.

Maryland has long required local government to spend as much on school operating budgets on a per-pupil basis as they did the year before. The so-called maintenance-of-effort law has been a cornerstone of public education for a quarter-century and has ensured predictable and stable funding for schools. But in an economic downtown of historic proportions that has caused tax revenues to drop precipitously and sent Baltimore and Maryland's 23 counties scrambling to patch budget deficits, the usefulness of the law has been called into question.

President Barack Obama is relying heavily on educators to pull the country out of its economic doldrums, and Maryland will soon receive $210 million in federal stimulus dollars for local school districts. Acknowledging that the huge federal package needs a jump-start of its own, Obama on Monday announced an accelerated spending timetable for a variety of programs, including money for 135,000 teachers, principals and support staff nationwide. While the administration portrayed the announcement as a new initiative, school systems across the state were already prepared to spend federal money.

A school board request for $4.7 million more county funding for new computers and building renovations appears unlikely to win approval from a Howard County Council beset by recession-driven cuts and employee furloughs. "I don't know where we'd find it," said council chairwoman Mary Kay Sigaty, a West Columbia Democrat, after a two-hour work session on the budget Friday in the county's temporary office quarters in Columbia. "Personally, I think they need to look at their own projects," commented Courtney Watson, an Ellicott City Democrat.