Audit Indicates Funds Mis-spent
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is an illusion. It’s an illusion created and being mandated by delusional politicians and “education” experts.
The Blueprint education reform, which is projected to cost the State of Maryland an additional 3.9 billion dollars in education spending at both the State and Local level, is a payoff to the Teachers’ Union, certain other professional political lobbying groups (medical, pharmaceutical, and dental), and those who want to obliterate local control of school systems currently exerted by elected and accountable school boards.
The original intent of the Thornton/Kirwan Legislation was to boost student achievement and balance school system funding across the state. The former goal hasn’t been achieved, and the latter goal has been achieved on the backs of state and local taxpayers. That goal has led to education mediocrity across the state and caused districts that were doing well to experience massive drops in student performance and achievement. Districts that were previously at the bottom are STILL at the bottom. All while the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is putting more costs on local districts which means incredible local property tax increases via assessments and tax bills.
Our State’s schools and their funding were placed in the power grubbing hands of unelected bureaucrats who create “one size fits all” programs, budgets, and mandates. If you are not convinced of that, watch any Accountability and Implementation Board or State Board of Education Meeting. The same stale answers for decades old problems always ending up with “more funding” for a study committee or a new program usually implemented using a highly paid consulting firm. The result?
Millions spent on ineffective programs that don’t move the achievement needle one bit. More wasted money being flushed down the government toilet and local districts left scrambling to find a way to implement useless mandates.
Now we find that even THAT money is unaccounted for.
As we are finding out now via the federal auditing efforts by the Trump Administration, bureaucrats don’t manage budgets well, especially billion-dollar budgets. Even state bureaucrats and local bureaucrats struggle with accountability and transparency.
A report came out in February of 2024 regarding the fact that funding for the Blueprint was either not used or incorrectly used by local school districts. From the BALTIMORE SUN:
Audit finds Maryland schools ‘didn’t know how to use’ state funds
Of course, this report, while reported by the SUN, was discreetly hidden in a State Office file somewhere. From the story in the Sun:
“We received a complaint in regards to the use of the funds and that is what initiated our review,” inspector general for education Richard Henry said.
The complaint alleged a community school manager “potentially mismanaged” the funds, prompting an investigative audit of eight schools.
“What we found was a lot of the schools just didn’t have an idea of how to spend the money. They were reaching out to the Maryland State Department of Education for guidance, and unfortunately, there was no one to provide them the guidance,” Henry said.
Inspectors also found that the position for training was vacant. In some cases, school districts were calling a dead phone line.
The amount? According to the audit, approximately $13 million dollars. And that’s what they could determine. It could be much more than that.
The excuse given was that the locals were not “trained” in how to use the money. Therefore, it just sat there, was incorrectly allocated, or was used to pay for profit vendors to train staff on how to use the money the state sent. Two districts that were specifically mentioned were Anne Arundel and Baltimore County Public Schools.
This is a statement from the Office of Inspector General for Education. The full report is attached.
CoP stands for “Concentration of Poverty.” Districts were given money to distribute to schools with high numbers of students designated as living at or below the poverty level. LEA stands for “Local Education Agencies.”
Given the amount of publicity given the Blueprint when it was passed, one would think the State of Maryland would have had all their plans in place before handing out money. It’s no surprise that most of this incompetence occurred under the administration of Mohammad Choudhury who was dismissed by the State Board in 2023.
But Choudhury cannot shoulder all the blame. Certainly, the State Board of Education wasn’t paying attention to what was happening.
It also occurred even though every school district in the State had hired Blueprint Coordinators to be trained in the administration of the Blueprint locally, often for six figure salaries. These coordinators met periodically, were trained, and presented district plans and reports to the State. Didn’t anyone notice the problem that how to spend certain funding categories was unclear? Did anyone care?
Apparently not.
Again from the SUN:
“We have eight individual audits that we’ll be providing in the coming month, and those audits will actually show a little bit further and get into the weeds of why things weren’t spent at the schools we identified,” he said.
Henry outlined seven recommendations to MSDE, including pausing the grant program entirely, but state law says the money must keep flowing.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Bureaucrats know the money is unaccounted for but they spend it anyway.
And, in true Maryland fashion, lawmakers found the solution. They made a law stating that the use of Blueprint funds usage must be “unrestricted” and thus almost impossible to audit how the funds were and are being spent. This is a huge problem as the state faces a massive deficit, one that the Governor wants to reduce on the backs of the taxpayers via higher taxes and fees.
It is all too familiar at so many government levels.
Of course, the teachers’ unions really don’t care about fiscal responsibility and accountability. They promote pushing the Blueprint forward no matter how much it costs.
Maryland education advocates rally in Annapolis as Blueprint faces restructure – CBS Baltimore
And they boldly advocate for initiatives that bring them more dues paying members. In an interview with FOX 45, former State lawmaker Jim Brochin talked about how much influence the teachers unions have on Maryland lawmakers:
Former state senator says teachers union power bankrupting Maryland, must be challenged
From the article:
The Democrat, who left office in 2019, knows how Annapolis works and who holds the power. And right now, he says, the Maryland State Education Association – the state’s largest teachers union – appears to be in charge.
“The power they have over this Democratic legislature is astounding,” Brochin told Project Baltimore.
Brochin believes that power held by MSEA is now bankrupting the state via the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore HAS proposed some cost cutting measures in the Blueprint, mainly the one that would allow teachers to teach only 60% of their day and spend 40% in planning or further training. According to Moore, this section of the Blueprint would require hiring 25% more teachers, or approximately 15,000, at the required base salary of $60,000 a year. This doesn’t include the cost of benefits. That measure alone would account for $900 million a year statewide.
No wonder the Union wants that initiative implemented. Fifteen thousand additional members would be big bucks and would bring union membership to 100,000 and be a major boost to the $26.5 yearly income of around $7.5 million.
We conducted a search to see if there was any more information regarding the results of the 2024 audit of the Blueprint, and of course there isn’t any. Remember, the Legislature made all the funds “unrestricted” which assures that we will never learn what actually happened and there will be no future audits of the Blueprint.
Sounds like what has been happening at the federal level:
DOGE claims it found $4.7 trillion in Treasury payments that are ‘untraceable’ | The Independent
So much for transparency. It died in the battle for truth and local control.
Maybe the best idea is for the Blueprint, like unnecessary and wasteful programs, to be dismantled. While we are at it, let’s start researching how our local, county and state officials are funded as well.
Jan Greenhawk, Author
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