The cold February rain fell as dozens of public school advocates bundled together in the dark outside the Maryland State House. Holding umbrellas and flashing blue lights as lawmakers gathered for an evening session, they shouted words like “investment” and “full funding,” urging the elected officials not to abandon the landmark education reform plan that was just starting to take off.
“Do we want another broken promise?” Shamoyia Gardiner, then-director of the advocacy group Strong Schools Maryland, asked during the rally for the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future last year.
“No!” the crowd shouted back.
It’s a scene likely to repeat itself — often and with even more urgency — in the next three months as the Maryland General Assembly returns to Annapolis on Wednesday for another annual legislative session.
A nearly $3 billion deficit is expected to ignite the toughest debates over funding priorities in years — with all kinds of stakeholders, from educators pleading for funding to businesses wary of higher taxes, gearing up for a fight.
“We’re going to be holding the pressure even stronger this year than we have in the past because we see this as the way forward, the only way forward,” Riya Gupta, Strong Schools Maryland’s interim executive director, said in a recent interview.
