Former Montgomery County Executive Isiah “Ike” Leggett, who currently chairs the board charged with implementing the state’s landmark 2021 education reform plan, has recognized over the years that initiatives to improve public education are all too often abandoned the minute they face headwinds.
But Leggett is from Louisiana, so he’s no stranger to headwinds, tornadoes and even hurricanes.
“We’re not turning back,” Leggett told a crowd of several dozen at Silver Spring’s Parkway Deli on Monday morning as he spoke about implementation of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future plan. “We’re going to make this happen.”
Leggett, who chairs the Accountability and Implementation Board for the reform plan, attended the District 18 Democratic Breakfast Club meeting to discuss where the Blueprint stands after last week’s close of the 2025 Maryland General Assembly session.
The Blueprint has been facing challenges this year. Amid a projected $3 billion budget shortfall for fiscal year 2026, Gov. Wes Moore (D) put forth a spending plan that included several cuts to the multiyear education reform plan. But last week, state lawmakers approved legislation that paused some aspects of the Blueprint while largely keeping the plan intact, Maryland Matters reported Tuesday.
The legislation passed April 7 paused a requirement for local school districts to implement collaborative time, which would give teachers more time out of the classroom to plan and work with one another and to assess student achievement, according to Maryland Matters. School systems were supposed to begin implementing collaborative time next year, but the legislature paused the requirement for three years.
Moore’s plan would’ve paused both the requirement to implement the collaborative time and the funding to do so for four years because fully implementing the requirement would require the hiring of at least 12,000 additional teachers throughout the state. But the legislation passed by the legislature kept funding to implement collaborative time at $163 per student for the next fiscal year until fiscal year 2029, when it would increase to $334 per student.
“That part of the plan has been at least phased in a little bit slowly because we do not have sufficient teachers in order to make that happen,” Leggett said Monday.
The legislation also preserved funding for community schools, which provide a variety of social services for students and families, and also protects students in poverty, special education and multilingual learners from per-pupil funding cuts, according to Maryland Matters.
Leggett said Moore’s plan would’ve continued funding for community schools but not provided increased funding moving forward. State lawmakers kept the planned increases in funding for community schools in the coming years.
“Community schools … are designed to, in fact, help parents become much more engaged in education,” Leggett said.
He told Bethesda Today the Blueprint will likely continue to face challenges moving forward due to teacher shortages and funding difficulties for local school districts as they look toward implementing the mandated Blueprint requirements.
Implementing the Blueprint changes won’t be easy, he said, but the plan includes “major transformative initiatives” that will make a “profound difference” in education.
“If we execute this plan anywhere near where we are today … it will have meaningful results,” Leggett said.
