The Maryland State Board of Education unanimously accepted final recommendations of a 58-member Blueprint special education work group Tuesday aimed at ensuring students with disabilities aren’t forgotten in the state’s multibillion-dollar education reform plan.
The group met for nearly two years to produce 27 recommendations in the report that are connected to the five pillars in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future: early childhood education, teacher diversity and retention, college and career readiness, more resources for student success, and governance and accountability.
When local school officials submitted their first Blueprint implementation plans in March 2023, every one said help was needed to recruit and retain teachers in all levels of special education. That need remains, the report said.
The board did not set a timeline for adopting the recommendations, but Liz Zogby said one that could be implemented in the coming school year is to provide special education training for general education teachers.
“It is really heartening that we have walked this dream for the last two years to get this done,” said Zogby, who co-chairs the work group with State Superintendent Carey Wright. “You can’t have change without getting leadership that truly believes in the vision and going to stand up for it.”
Zogby, who’s also co-chair of the Maryland Down Syndrome Advocacy Coalition, was praised by Wright, board President Joshua Michael and others as one of the main advocates for integrating special education in the 10-year Blueprint reform plan.
Board member Joan Mele-McCarthy, whose term expires after this week, suggested an analysis of the recommendations to see which could be implemented first and which would have the most impact.
“Because you have a lot of recommendations, I worry that in your effort to implement all of them, none get achieved or accomplished,” said Mele-McCarthy, executive director of The Summit School in Anne Arundel County.
“As I leave the board, I encourage my colleagues to keep talking about special education, the needs of children who have special needs and to really look at their achievement,” she said. “Unless we really pay attention to that and help children learn and achieve, we will not see the success that we would like.”
The recommendations include:
- Strengthening partnerships between families, local school officials and state and community organizations;
- Providing constant professional development for teachers and related service providers to teach students with disabilities; and
- Proposing legislation for the 2026 General Assembly session to commission an “adequacy study” of Maryland’s special education funding.
Mele-Carthy, Zogby and Antoine Hickman, assistant state superintendent with the division of special education, noted that this year is the 50th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which was signed into law in November 1975 by then-President Gerald Ford.
Zogby said the state has about 106,000 students with disabilities, about 13% of the total student population.
“Dr. Michael talked about that inclusion isn’t a strategy. It’s a value. Completely agree,” Zogby said. “We can’t live that value without the presence of students in our classrooms.”
Library updates
The state board also approved amendments to bring state regulations library media services in line with the Freedom to Read Act approved by the legislature last year. The act, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Nancy King (D-Montgomery) and Del. Dana Jones (D-Anne Arundel), reflected a national conversation about what books and materials should be publicly available in schools and libraries.
Maryland became one of the first states in the nation to enact strong protections for access to information in libraries, as well as penalties for those who attempt to thwart access.
Moms for Liberty, a conservative parental-rights group with about 300 chapters nationwide, has been one of the leaders pushing for stricter rules for school systems to select library books. Maryland has nearly a dozen local chapters including Carroll County, which successfully sought to remove dozens of books last year from school libraries.
The state law requires local school officials to manage library programs and not exclude or remove materials “because of partisan, ideological, or religious disapproval.” The law also says a local school board “may not dismiss, demote, suspend, discipline, reassign, transfer, or otherwise retaliate against a librarian, certified library media specialist, or school library media program support staff for performing their job duties.”
All local school systems must create a committee to review any books and other materials in school libraries that are challenged for removal. Beginning Oct. 1, local school systems will be required to have school library media program implementation documents that will be reviewed and then approved by local school boards every two years.
The state Education Department will implement a procedure to conduct periodic reviews of local school system library media programs to help identify any professional development needs for school staff.
Part of the updated regulations will require a certified school library media specialist in each school. Some schools do that now, but others may have one person who rotates between five and 10 schools, said Elise Brown, assistant state superintendent of instructional programs.
Michael asked how much flexibility local school systems — also called local education agencies, or LEAs — have when it comes to library personnel.
“The LEA has a lot of flexibility,” Brown said. “It really is determined by how they interpret [state regulations].”
Michael had a message for some local school officials and the public when it comes to “local control.”
“While we have a tradition of local control, what is on the books is a state public education, and so it is essential that our local schools maintain that trust and uphold the standards,” he said. “Should those standards not be upheld that we set, the tradition of local control will be challenged.”
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