Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley warned the state’s school superintendents on Tuesday to prepare to face cuts as a result of the state’s $2 billion budget shortfall.
“You know what the reality is,” O’Malley told the executives gathered in Annapolis. “There’s no spin I can put on a $2 billion shortfall in a $13 billion general fund.”
O’Malley took great pains to convince the superintendents that he’s been an ally, including using federal stimulus dollars to fully fund the state’s portion of education costs, or about 40 percent of its total budget.
But unless the federal government somehow extends financial aid to states, O’Malley said that the good times will likely be over by 2011.
School funding has so far not taken the “excruciating, deep cuts” felt by other public services, he said.
Come the legislative session in January, “there will likely be a lot of [state representatives] asking if it’s time to cut back on education,” O’Malley said.
Senate President Mike Miller, D-Calvert and Prince George’s, also in attendance at the gathering, said, “there is no alternative but to take cuts.”
Miller has long been a proponent of shifting the cost of teacher pensions back to the counties, an idea feared in Montgomery County where district employees make more on average than in other jurisdictions.
“This year pensions will cost us $100 million in new money, on top of what we paid last year,” he said. “Districts set the salaries, they do the collective bargaining, let them pick up the pensions.”
Allowing that shifting the entire burden isn’t politically feasible, Miller proposed to the superintendents a compromise whereby districts would take on the pension costs for new hires.
Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry Weast expressed optimism that O’Malley would continue to prioritize education funding.
“He says he supports education and he does support it,” Weast said.
O’Malley used the meeting to call on the superintendents to work together to save money — creating school templates, for example, instead of spending thousands of dollars on planning for each new school construction.
“There’s nothing that focuses the mind like our own execution,” O’Malley said.
