Maryland’s educators, parents, and policymakers have worked together to provide our children with the #1 ranked public schools in the nation for four years in a row.
But the funding for our top-rated schools is at risk—not just this year, but potentially for years to come. We must act now to protect the investments we’ve made in our schools and students.
What can you do to help protect school funding?
- Take part in MSEA’s statewide call-in day on February 28! Join educators and education advocates from around the state as we call our elected officials and speak up for school funding. Call 1-866-268-MSEA. You’ll hear a quick prompt and then get patched through to your legislators. And don’t just wait for the 28th – you can call that number anytime to speak with your representatives in Annapolis to urge them to protect our schools.
- Email Gov. O'Malley and your elected officials today!
- Download our flyer about protecting school funding to spread the word among your friends and colleagues.
- Sign up for the latest news with MSEA's text alerts. Text MSEA to 66937 to join!
How Can We Protect Our Students?
Fixing the broken Maintenance of Effort (MOE) Law
Nearly one-third of Maryland’s counties are slashing per-pupil funding—some by nearly 30 percent—forcing schools to raise class sizes and cut student programs. This isn’t how our local school funding law, known as maintenance of effort, was meant to work. $2.6 billion in cuts could come in the future unless we act now. We need to strengthen the law by ensuring it has accountability, flexibility, and fairness and that the state/local partnership to fund our schools remains well-defined, intact, and dependable.
Prevent the shift of teacher pension costs to local government
Shifting costs is tantamount to a huge, long-term cut in education funding—creating far more problems than it solves. A pension shift is poor policy on its own, and without a comprehensive fix to maintenance of effort, it would be a disaster for our schools.
Support a balanced approach to restore the fiscal health of Maryland
Solving budget challenges cannot be done on a continued diet of cuts. We need sensible solutions, including new revenue, that will keep our schools great, our quality of life secure, and our jobs here.
Learn more from Save Our State—a coalition of community, nonprofit, and labor groups of which MSEA is a member. The coalition is drawing attention to the need for sensible budget solutions. Learn more and ask legislators to take a balanced budget approach on the Save Our State site.
Other Hot Issues
Hundreds of other education-related bills are under discussion during the 2012 legislative session. Our efforts to fight on behalf of our students, schools, and profession include:
- Supporting Gov. O’Malley’s full funding of Thornton funding formulas in his budget
The state’s full funding of education keeps critical resources in our classrooms and needed programs and services in our schools. - Improving student achievement
Whether it is to encourage greater parental involvement, recruit and retain outstanding teachers, or ensure that high quality professional development opportunities exist, we must focus on solutions that help educators teach and students learn. - Rejecting voucher bills
Sponsoring and supporting voucher bills like BOAST when schools are already struggling to receive needed resources takes us further away from our goal to provide great public schools to every student. - Improving retirement security
While we would like to repeal the harmful pension reforms from last session, we must prioritize our efforts to end the “Teacher Tax,” protect COLAs for current and future retirees, and seek long-term relief in employee contribution rates as the pension system is strengthened and stabilized. - Protecting and strengthening bargaining rights
We call on legislators to oppose “right to work” legislation and any usurping of bargaining rights. We will continue to advocate for statewide agency fee legislation, because we know that strong unions build the middle class.