The law’s implementation period, delayed a year, is 2024-2034 and to start funding it, each county’s initial 2024 “Required Minimum Local Appropriation” came in at 2x, 3X and in one case 6X (Baltimore City) higher than Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services had predicted in 2021-22. Simply projecting these increases forward means this law alone will impose $100,000,000,000+ in new, additional taxes on Maryland citizens over the implementation period.

The law will affect each Maryland county (and its public school jurisdiction) differently depending on a number of variables that the State has rolled up into measures of each county’s (a) “Relative Wealth Per Pupil” (the State deems Kent County to be Maryland’s 3rd wealthiest county by this measure, although by the State’s own calculations we are also the 23rd poorest county) and (b) “Relative Local Education Effort” (by this measure, the State ranks Kent very poorly, only 21st of 24 jurisdictions, even exceeded in rank by Baltimore City schools). The State also has calculated each county’s/jurisdiction’s 2034 targeted “Local Education Effort” score and the “Local Education Effort” gap that must be closed between 2024 and 2034. Kent’s “Effort gap” is the largest in Maryland, and the projected cost of closing it is huge. We believe key drivers in this “Effort” formula are each jurisdiction’s MCAP (“Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program”) test scores. KCPS’ own MCAP scores (pre- and post-pandemic) have been pathetic, and with respect to our African American kids, heart breaking.

KCPS’ damaging rankings in these new State school funding formulas mean that the Blueprint tax will fall very hard on Kent County. Local analysts, including this writer, believe that the Blueprint will cost Kent County’s taxpayers at least $100 million in new real estate taxes (three to five times current levels) alone during the 2024-2034 implementation period, and it is very likely that the Legislature will cynically raise the county income tax cap from 3.2% (a) to force each county’s commissioners to raise much of the rest of the Blueprint’s required funding at the county level and (b) to make the commissioners take the majority of the voter backlash. Economically, the Blueprint is simply unsustainable and unaffordable to Kent County, the State’s 23rd poorest with the State’s lowest county GDP.

AS to Maryland as whole, while the law’s public education goals are wonderful, it will fail simply because it puts vast amounts of new, private sector taxpayer money in the hands of the same entrenched MSDOE bureaucrats and jurisdiction administrators who caused the worst of our public school problems in the first place; and if unchanged, the law will do great fiscal damage to our State, already one of the highest taxed states in America. High taxes and social dystopia drive out higher income taxpayers who pay most of the taxes and who can afford to leave. Between 1992 and 2022, the IRS calculates that Maryland lost (net, in-movers less out-movers), $23 billion of taxable Adjusted Gross Income. The State’s own Department of Planning has acknowledged that, “Out-migration has become a dominant factor in Maryland’s population change”. Thus the Blueprint’s taxes may accelerate taxpayer out-migration (Maryland ranked 7th highest of 50 states in 2022), accentuating Maryland’s already declining tax revenues.

The Blueprint is soon to make Kent County taxpayers aware of the full extent of the damage its under-performing school system has done to them, and worse, they are soon to become far more aware of how woefully it has failed (and continues to fail) our African American children. As we become more aware of these realities, let’s not blame our commissioners, who didn’t make this law, who have spent more local dollars per pupil than most counties on public education and who don’t run our schools; and let’s not blame the KCPS teachers, so many of whom do their best. Let’s get motivated; let’s petition Maryland’s Senate and House of Delegates leadership for Blueprint relief; let’s volunteer to tutor and act instead of virtue-signalling; and let’s replace our school board at the ballot box, followed out the door by Dr. Couch and much of our bloated public school administration, who seem more preoccupied with clandestinely promoting their own ideologies than the basics of reading, writing, math and science.
To learn more, please visit our website at blueprintkent.org