In a big win for Baltimore City schools this week, the Maryland House of Delegates voted to override the governor’s 2020 veto of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the historic education equity legislation that includes recommendations from the Kirwan Commission Report. For the last several years, OSI’s Education and Youth Development program, along with grantees like Strong Schools Baltimore, Advocates for Children and Youth, and Baltimore Algebra Project, among others, have worked to advocate for the state to implement the Blueprint’s recommendations, including long-term adequate school funding for Baltimore City Public Schools and other historically under-resourced school districts throughout Maryland.
In 2019, Del. Brooke Lierman and Shamoyia Gardiner, then the Education Policy Director of Advocates for Children and Youth, spoke to OSI-Baltimore’s Leadership Council, outlining the benefits of fully funding the commission’s recommendations, including the Sage Policy Group study, commissioned by Strong Schools Maryland, indicating that the economic benefits of fully funding the recommendations would exceed the costs by 2034 and continue to increase thereafter.
The Senate will have the opportunity for a similar vote to override the governor’s veto in the coming days.
