It’s Budget Season!

Happy New Year! May 2025 bring each of you good health and happiness.

Now that January is upon us, so too is budget season. By the time this story prints, it’s likely that both Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS) budget hearings will be in the past; however, you will still have ample time to make your concerns known via phone, email and at regularly scheduled meetings of the board should you choose to sign up to provide testimony on non-agenda items. The board will amend and adopt the Fiscal Year 2026 operating budget during the February 19 meeting, which will begin at 6:30pm. Additionally, the county executive holds annual budget hearings in every district. The District 5 hearing will occur at Severna Park High School on Thursday, January 16, at 6:00pm.

Superintendent Mark Bedell’s three key focus areas for this budget are early childhood literacy, special education, and multilingual learners. Each of these areas requires additional resources if we want to become the great school district our students deserve.

The recommended budget not only adds four teachers, 20 teacher assistants, and a speech pathologist to our birth-to-age-5 services to ensure that our youngest children requiring extra support are put on a path of success, but also adds over 100 special education teachers, additional teacher assistants, 28 Individualized Education Program (IEP) facilitators, five occupational therapists and five speech pathologists.

These extra teachers and support staff will provide increased support for our students who receive special education services, alleviate the crushing workload on existing special educators and IEP facilitators, and improve student outcomes. Please note that no additional special education resources were funded last year even as needs have increased. Kindergarten through 12th-grade students receiving special education services have grown 5% over the last two years and over 23% for our birth-to-5 cohort.

In the area of early childhood literacy, this budget adds $2 million for early intervention teachers to replace expiring Blueprint for Maryland’s Future funding, and $275,000 for staffing as the conversion of the Carver Professional Growth & Development Center in Gambrills becomes our fourth early education center. If educators have the resources they need to intervene and begin to solve literacy challenges earlier, outcomes for these students will improve.

Also, among the fastest growing student groups are multilingual learners. Dr. Bedell is recommending over $2 million, which includes 18 teachers who specialize in English language development, two bilingual pupil personnel workers, and shifting six existing bilingual facilitator positions to 12-month positions to better serve families year-round.

Blueprint mandates will require AACPS to hire 154 additional classroom teachers to provide more opportunities during the school day for professional development, collaborative planning, and working with small groups of students who need additional supports. As stated in recent news articles, there is a possibility that this or other portions of the Blueprint could be “paused” due to significant state budget challenges. Specifics won’t be known until the Maryland General Assembly passes the budget later this spring.

For more information about the Fiscal Year 2026 operating and capital budgets, including the entire budget document, Dr. Bedell’s remarks about the budget and more, visit www.aacps.org/capitaloperating-budgets. Should you want to communicate your budget concerns or ideas to the full board, please email boardoffice@aacps.org and request your message be sent to all members.

As always, I can be reached at 443-534-2660, dschallheim@aacps.org, or via the socials (Facebook or Instagram).