LEONARDTOWN — St. Mary’s County Public Schools could be short roughly $19 million in state money heading into the next budget, County Commissioner Scott Ostrow said after the commissioners’ annual joint meeting with the Board of Education, a warning that sets up one of the county’s hardest school-funding years in recent memory.
“They’re going to have a pretty significant shortfall from the state, talking numbers somewhere around $19 million,” Ostrow said during commissioner comments later on Oct. 27. “This coming budget is going to be really, really, really rough.”
The figure has not yet appeared in a published school system budget document. It is a preliminary estimate relayed by a commissioner, and the actual gap will depend on the state aid numbers Gov. Wes Moore’s administration releases with its budget in January and on what the General Assembly does with them. Still, for families, teachers and taxpayers, the message from both boards was the same: the fiscal 2028 school budget will be built under pressure.
What the boards discussed
The joint session opened the commissioners’ day at 9 a.m. in the Board of Education meeting room on Moakley Street. According to the county’s meeting summary, the two boards discussed student enrollment projections, the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future and ways to strengthen the local teaching workforce, including the Maryland State Department of Education’s Grow Your Own grant program. That program helps school systems put paraprofessionals on a path to becoming licensed teachers at no cost to the employees.
Those three topics are linked. State aid to Maryland school systems is driven largely by enrollment, so a shift in student counts moves dollars. The Blueprint, the state’s multiyear education reform law, also requires counties to keep raising their own contributions as it phases in higher teacher pay, expanded pre-kindergarten and career programs.
Commissioner Eric Colvin said the school board offered “a lot of foreshadowing” about the next budget cycle. “It’s looking difficult,” he said, adding that the open question is what the state will actually deliver on its education commitments.
Why Annapolis matters
Ostrow tied the warning to a broader pattern he has raised before: the state pushing more costs onto counties. “They’re passing more and more down to the counties,” he said.
The state’s own budget analysts have documented that shift. In its January fiscal briefing, the Department of Legislative Services told lawmakers the governor’s $70.8 billion fiscal 2027 budget closed a projected $1.5 billion shortfall partly through capped formulas and cost shifts, and projected significant deficits in the years after, according to the Maryland Association of Counties’ summary of the briefing. Among the changes:
- Starting in fiscal 2027, local governments pay half of the growth in retirement costs for K-12 teachers, community colleges and libraries.
- Counties statewide absorb roughly $1 billion a year in underfunded special education costs and about $500 million a year in underfunded student transportation.
When state aid falls short, the gap lands in one of three places: the county’s general fund, which is supported mainly by property and income taxes; reductions in the school system’s own spending plan; or a mix of the two. The county must also meet the state’s maintenance-of-effort rule, which generally bars it from cutting per-pupil local funding from one year to the next.
“Pinch every penny”
Ostrow said the outlook supports keeping county spending focused on existing obligations. “We need to make sure we are maintaining the things we currently have before we’re taking on anything new,” he said, adding that the county will have to figure out how to meet needs “throughout the county, not just the school system.”
The same day, the commissioners hosted the Maryland Association of Counties for its annual visit, where they pushed back on state housing mandates, another front in the county’s running argument with Annapolis over local control and cost.
The joint meeting is a yearly fixture. Last fall’s session focused on school safety and the budget, the Chronicle reported at the time.
The calendar ahead is tight. The commissioners do not meet Nov. 3 or Nov. 10 and return Nov. 17, according to the county. The superintendent’s proposed fiscal 2028 operating budget typically goes to the Board of Education in winter, after the governor’s budget sets state aid in January, and the board’s request then goes to the commissioners for local funding decisions in the spring. The joint meeting can be watched on demand on the county government’s YouTube channel.
