{"id":7476,"date":"2017-01-05T07:00:05","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7476"},"modified":"2017-01-04T17:49:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T22:49:33","slug":"hogans-campaign-against-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7476","title":{"rendered":"Hogan\u2019s Campaign Against Public Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Governor Larry Hogan is the most dedicated opponent of Maryland public schools in recent memory.\u00a0 And now, new rankings of states in a respected education publication show how effective he has been.<\/p>\n

Education Week, which ranks public school systems by state, rated Maryland\u2019s public schools as fifth in the nation as of 2017<\/a>.\u00a0 That\u2019s a decent rank, except when you consider that the publication rated Maryland number one every year from 2009 through 2013<\/a>.\u00a0 Maryland scored particularly low on its achievement gap between low-income and high-income students, ranked as 42nd<\/sup> in the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The decline in the state\u2019s ranking is no surprise since it\u2019s perfectly consistent with Governor Hogan\u2019s record on public schools.\u00a0 Consider what he has done in his first two years in office.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. He cut public school funding in his first budget.<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Governor of Maryland has enormous budgetary powers under the state\u2019s constitution.\u00a0 When he submits an operating budget to the General Assembly, the state legislators generally cannot add spending to it \u2013 they can only set aside spending for particular purposes or cut it.\u00a0 Over the years, the General Assembly has established funding formulas for certain spending items in state law, and that includes most state aid programs for K-12 education.\u00a0 But the Governor identified one program that was not protected by state law \u2013 a program that sent extra money to school systems with higher costs of educating students.\u00a0 The Governor cut half of that money, a total of $68 million<\/a>, in his very first budget.\u00a0 Here are the counties that were affected and their dollar losses:<\/p>\n

    Prince George\u2019s: $20 million<\/p>\n

    Montgomery: $18 million<\/p>\n

    Baltimore City: $12 million<\/p>\n

    Anne Arundel: $5 million<\/p>\n

    Frederick: $3 million<\/p>\n

    Baltimore County: $3 million<\/p>\n

    Howard: $3 million<\/p>\n

    Others: $4 million<\/p>\n

    Note that almost three-quarters of the cuts applied to three jurisdictions: Prince George\u2019s, Montgomery and the City.\u00a0 What do they have in common?\u00a0 You guessed it: they all voted against Hogan by large margins.<\/p>\n

    Hogan resisted calls from the General Assembly to restore the cuts, so they passed a law making the program mandatory.\u00a0 Hogan waved the white flag of surrender, admitting that he did not have the votes to sustain a veto<\/a>.\u00a0 If he had gotten them, those cuts would have continued every single year.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. He withheld teacher pension aid for counties in his second budget.<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Since FY2013, counties have been responsible for paying part of the cost of teacher pension funding, with the remainder covered by the state.\u00a0 After passage of his second budget, Hogan withheld $19 million in state aid<\/a>\u00a0the General Assembly set aside\u00a0to help counties pay for teacher pensions, a move that threatened their credit ratings<\/a>.\u00a0 Here are the counties that were affected and their dollar losses:<\/p>\n

      Montgomery: $6 million<\/p>\n

      Howard: $2 million<\/p>\n

      Baltimore County: $2 million<\/p>\n

      Anne Arundel: $2 million<\/p>\n

      Prince George\u2019s: $1 million<\/p>\n

      Frederick: $1 million<\/p>\n

      Others: $5 million<\/p>\n

      Ultimately, Hogan agreed to release the money but only when\u00a0the General Assembly agreed to provide an equal amount in corporate welfare to Northrop Grumman<\/a>, one of Hogan\u2019s top policy priorities.\u00a0 What kind of Governor plays games with school funding in order to get more money for corporate welfare?<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. He is jamming public school boards with public school skeptics.<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        As Governor, Hogan has the power to appoint members of the State Board of Education as well as numerous local school boards.\u00a0 He has used that prerogative to stack these boards with skeptics of public schools.\u00a0 The President and Vice-President of the State Board of Education<\/a>, both Hogan appointees, are nationally-known promoters of charter schools<\/a>.\u00a0 Other State Board appointees<\/a> are a religious school principal and \u201ca consultant who works on charter school conversions.\u201d\u00a0 It is no coincidence that the State Board is now considering an expansion of vouchers for private schools<\/a>.\u00a0 Another Hogan appointee is Ann Miller of the Baltimore County school board, who has a history of criticizing LGBT people and immigrants<\/a>.\u00a0 Another Baltimore County school board appointee, retired private school teacher and non-voter June Eaton, was asked by the Baltimore Sun<\/a> \u201cif she had any public school issues that needed to be addressed.\u201d\u00a0 Eaton replied, \u201cI really haven’t given it much thought. This is all new to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. He is pushing hard for tax dollars to be sent to private schools.<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          At the same time that Hogan has been trying to cut funding for public schools, he is doing everything in his power to send tax dollars to private schools.\u00a0 Last year, he got the General Assembly to agree to $5 million in funding for vouchers.\u00a0 Now, he is pushing to expand the program to $10 million<\/a>.\u00a0 The Governor continues to support a corporate tax credit for businesses contributing to private schools<\/a> and introduced a bill that would have allowed charter schools to compete for state public school construction funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

          Hogan\u2019s behavior is straight out of the playbook of Donald Trump\u2019s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos: starve public schools and send the money to the private sector.\u00a0 Hogan even put his own twist on it by using public school money as a bargaining chip to get corporate welfare for defense behemoth Northrop Grumman.\u00a0 The Governor\u2019s intentions are beyond doubt.\u00a0 Only one question remains.<\/p>\n

          Can he be stopped?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          By Adam Pagnucco. Governor Larry Hogan is the most dedicated opponent of Maryland public schools in recent memory.\u00a0 And now, new rankings of states in a respected education publication show how effective he has been. Education Week, which ranks public school systems by state, rated Maryland\u2019s public schools as fifth in the nation as of … Continue reading Hogan\u2019s Campaign Against Public Schools<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,82,1197],"tags":[1545,1507,968],"class_list":["post-7476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-education","category-larry-hogan","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-education","tag-larry-hogan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1WA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7476"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7483,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7476\/revisions\/7483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}