Issue Position: Educational Priority
Issue Position
A strong educational system is the linchpin to improving the economy, restoring home values, and breaking once and for all, the school-to-prison-pipeline.
Currently, it costs about $13,000 to educate a child, and about $16,000 to incarcerate .it is clear where our investment should be.
ISSUE: In recent years, our current legislators in 23B failed to fight for Prince George's County's "fair share" of state aid. We lost approx $100M over several years because of the failure to act and action needs to take place NOW as the State seeks to implement the findings of the Kirwan Commission Report also known as the "Maryland Commission on Innovation & Excellence in Education" to determine state aid for education.
SITUATION: State funding is currently allocated using an "inverse wealth" formula. Simply stated, the state takes the "net income" of all residents and determines the "relative wealth" of each county. Wealthier counties get more, poorer counties get less. In 2007 the federal tax filing deadline changed from Aug 1st to Oct 15th. Unfortunately, the state was slow to change the date by which they do their wealth assessment. Since wealthier folks and business tend to file late, a large portion of income was not accounted for. Although this was remedied a few years ago, it resulted in Prince George's County losing approx $13M per year for several years. How our school district gets funding is critical, and any "straight line" funding formula based on the number of students (per pupil allocation) will NOT meet the needs of our school district.
ACTION: Prince George's County cannot be compared to Montgomery County and other surrounding jurisdictions. A true "apples to apples" comparison can only be made with other "urban" school districts. These include: Baltimore City, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Charlotte Mecklenburg to name a few. Why "urban" school districts? Because urban districts have a higher number of students on "free and reduced meals", students with special education needs, and english language learners .in short, urban school districts have a higher population of "At-Risk" students. This truth must be factored into funding formulas and as your State Delegate must fight for this!
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