Formal requests to restore the $22.5 million cut from the state of Maryland’s annual allocation to Calvert County Public Schools have been sent to Gov. Wes Moore.
Two missives sent to Moore (D) were forwarded by the Calvert County commissioners and public schools’ Superintendent Andraé Townsel.
The commissioners noted in their letter about “the end of the payment in lieu of taxes agreements with both Constellation Energy Generation’s Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant and Berkshire Hathaway Energy GT&S’s Cove Point LNG. The end of these agreements caused an unrealistic wealth assessment for Calvert County, which skewed the results of the state funding formula” for the local school system.
The commissioners’ joint letter noted they reduced spending “across all program areas,” delayed most of the county government’s capital projects and looked at local tax increases to cover the shortfall.
“When we were notified of pending staff layoffs” within the public school system, the commissioners said, they “scheduled an emergency meeting where we provided additional funding” for the school system “for a total of $164.7 million for [fiscal 2025] from Calvert County’s fund balance.”
Additionally, the commissioners directed school system officials “to use their fund balance to cover the remaining deficit.”
The commissioners also raised the rates for both property and income taxes.
They stated that new payment in lieu of taxes pacts are now in place for both facilities and are retroactive to July 1, 2023.
Of the actions taken by the boards of county commissioners and education, Townsel said, “these stop-gap measures are keeping us afloat for the current fiscal year but cannot be sustained.”
Townsel told Moore in his letter that Calvert needs the funding restored in order to meet the mandates set forth in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform.
“Under the Blueprint, we are implementing the new career ladders negotiated with our local Maryland State Education Association affiliate and approved by the accountability and implementation board, but the additional costs associated with the increased pay for teachers with national board certification, the upcoming minimum teacher starting salary of $60,000, the implementation of career ladders for principals and assistant principals, the costs of dual enrollment, increased pre-kindergarten programs and other Blueprint requirements all come with a hefty price tag,” Townsel said in his letter to the governor.
The commissioners told Moore they were “pleased to see that the state realized a surplus from last fiscal year with approximately $479 million in uncommitted surplus.”
A recent report from the Maryland Comptroller’s Office said the state closed fiscal 2024 “with a fund balance of $1.06 billion in the general fund. Of this amount, $581 million was assigned by the 2024 General Assembly for fiscal year 2025 operations leaving an unassigned fund balance of $479 million.”
Southern Maryland News has reached out to the governor’s office about a possible response to the requests from Moore but had not received a reply at press time.
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