More News

ANNAPOLIS — Requests to waive the maintenance-of-effort funding requirement for fiscal 2010 are creating a new fault line in some counties, pitting local governments against school officials and boards and teachers' unions.

Due to tight budgets, eight jurisdictions, including Montgomery County, have asked the state board of education for exemptions from the school funding law, which mandates that counties spend at least as much on education per pupil as the previous year.

School board members, administrators and union representatives in some counties have denounced elected officials whom they say are breaking promises to fully support education and have not done enough to avoid cutting aid to schools.

The war of words has grown particularly fierce in Charles County, with the county and school board chirping at each other over dueling news releases. Tensions also are running high between the two sides in Worcester County, where a personality conflict among several commissioners is driving the discord, said board of education president Robert G. Hulburd.

And in Anne Arundel County, the waiver request has inflamed already-bruised relations between schools' Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell and County Executive John R. Leopold (R). In a statement, Maxwell said Leopold's pursuit of the maintenance-of-effort waiver, which amounts to a $7 million decrease from the current fiscal year, would be a "catastrophic step backward."

Such friction isn't surprising, said Blair G. Ewing, a state school board member who has served on both the Montgomery County school board and Montgomery County Council. Local governments must balance their budget and provide services across the board, while school officials are advocating for their own funding needs.

That divide is amplifying the acrimony in Charles.

School officials there issued a news release alleging the county's fiscal condition is not dire enough to warrant a waiver request. The commissioners rebutted that school board members would rather increase taxes than accept less aid.

If the exemption is granted, Charles schools will have to reduce their spending by $4.5 million from this year and $14 million from the proposed $304 million fiscal 2010 budget. But school board members bristled that the waiver would amount to a double cut, because the county already has reduced spending by $4.3 million.

In tight times, all recipients of local aid must sacrifice, County Commissioner Gary V. Hodge (D) said.

But union officials maintain that Charles has enough money in its reserve account to meet the education funding requirement.

"Just because a lot of counties are having a fiscal crisis doesn't mean Charles County is," said Meg MacDonald of the Education Association of Charles County.

It's particularly unsettling, MacDonald said, because two of the five commissioners — president F. Wayne Cooper and vice president Edith J. Patterson — are former school board chairmen who know how much the system relies on local aid.

Calvert County union officials expressed similar dismay that its commissioners would try to dodge education funding obligations. Joseph Sella, chief negotiator for the Calvert Education Association and the Calvert Association of Educational Support Staff, called the move "reprehensible."

Worcester County schools, which rely on the county for more than three-fourths of their budget, stand to lose $2.3 million in education aid if the maintenance-of-effort waiver is approved, which Hulburd said is a substantial figure in a system that has seen its assessment scores improve in recent years.

"It's like taking an ocean liner and trying to turn it around on a dime," he said, noting the personality conflicts that have made the issue more contentious. "That's a lot in one year."

Other jurisdictions have seen a more collegial environment between the county and school system. The two groups in Wicomico County held a meeting April 7 to address how to absorb roughly $2 million less for education in fiscal 2010.

Staff writers Gretchen Phillips and Laura Buck contributed to this report.