Maryland’s charter schools are warning of possible closures as their leaders describe “dramatic” funding cuts since the rollout of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s signature education reform plan.
At the heart of a decades-long dispute is a conflict about how much money should flow to charter schools versus what can be withheld by traditional school districts for centrally managed services.
Charter leaders across the state, particularly in Baltimore City, argue they are being shortchanged. They say district officials are using the Blueprint as an excuse to claw back funds without transparency, undermining charter schools’ ability to fully serve around 25,000 students across the state, while another approximately 25,000 sit on waiting lists.
This has put many charter schools in financial crisis, according to Will McKenna, founder and executive director of Afya Baltimore, which runs two charter schools in the city. The financial impacts of the new funding formula will put charter schools “in danger of closing,” he said.
One Baltimore City Public Schools official said those claims are “hyperbolic.”
Any funds retained by the district are necessary to cover expenses like employee benefits and special education services, said Angela Alvarez, senior executive director of the Office of New Initiatives at BCPS.
“We make sure schools are funded according to the Blueprint,” Alvarez said, adding that traditional schools are now “subsidizing charter school expenses.”
Against the backdrop of escalating tensions, the Maryland State Board of Education stepped in on Thursday, adopting a resolution directing local districts to publicly clarify how they fund charter schools. The directive requires districts to submit budget breakdowns and explanations by July 31.
“Charter leaders are thrilled with this,” McKenna said.
“We keep talking about transparency and not having the numbers,” he said. “And now you have the State Board of Education and the state superintendent saying … ‘Show us the calculation. Show us the numbers.’”
State Board President Joshua Michael said Thursday’s action is not issuing new policy, but “reiterating in plain words” the meaning and intent of the law and the accompanying rules outlined by the State Board.” He added that funding formulas for charters lacked clarity for 20 years, leading to costly legal appeals.
The lack of clarity “is and has been an institutional failure for the state board, [Maryland State Department of Education] and state policymakers,” he said during the state board meeting Thursday. “This board, standing on its commitment to transparency and accountability, will seek to bring clarity in school funding for charter schools.”
‘Dramatic’ slash in funding
In Baltimore, charter schools received dramatic cuts to their direct per-pupil funding after the Blueprint was implemented, McKenna said. He said he’s currently representing 14 charter school operators in a dispute over the school system’s budget and plans to meet with the school district in early June.
In the 2020, 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, charter schools received between $3,500 and $3,700 more per pupil than traditional schools, McKenna said, citing adopted budgets for those years. After the Blueprint, the amount decreased to $694 per charter school student in fiscal year 2024, $227 in fiscal year 2025 and then slightly increased to $298 in fiscal year 2026.
A spokesperson for Baltimore City Public Schools didn’t comment about the decrease in per-pupil funding between pre- and post-Blueprint years. During a phone call, Alvarez noted charter schools have “had more money this year than last year.”
McKenna describes such statements about increased funding as “infuriating,” saying this year’s increase is “peanuts” compared to the prior “dramatic” decrease. For one school, the per-pupil funding this year equates to only $251,000, he said.
“There’s no way on God’s green earth that you can tell me that a charter school that operates its own building can take $251,000 and do what it’s supposed to do,” he said.
‘They don’t want to pay their share’
Alvarez, with Baltimore City school leadership, said the funding they centrally manage, including employee costs and special education, “have to be covered at the district level to ensure that they’re equitably funded.”
The Blueprint “established an actual formula” in Maryland, “where before it wasn’t as clear,” Alvarez said.
In her interview with The Sun, which took place prior to Thursday’s resolution being passed, Alvarez said it would be “inequitable” to allow charter schools to manage 98% of funds, as they have advocated. She added that such a funding model is “not consistent” with the law or previous decisions made by the state board.
“We’re trying to ensure there’s a fair, equitable funding formula for all students … students attending charter schools and traditional schools … not having one pay for the other, which has been the case for a number of years,” she said.
But McKenna said he questions where the money is going.
“We’re not quite sure what they’re spending the money on, because they’re not exactly transparent,” McKenna said.
Asked multiple times what percent of funds is withheld or centrally managed by the school district, Alvarez did not provide any specific figure.
“It’s a fair-funding formula,” Alvarez said. “They don’t want to pay their share. That’s what they’re arguing for.”
On Thursday morning, BCPS didn’t respond to specific follow-up questions about how charter schools are funded, but instead issued a statement, saying, “Our school funding approach follows state law, which requires charter and traditional school students to receive equivalent funding. The Blueprint Act ensures fair distribution, including extra support for students with greater needs.”
The district added in its statement that concerns about funding “were resolved through proper legal channels two years ago.
“We’re open to working with charters acting in good faith, but traditional students should not be expected to fund schools they don’t attend,” the district said.
The spokesperson didn’t respond when asked if the district is compliant with the state board’s new directives issued on Thursday.
Warnings of school closures
The financial impacts of the new funding formula mean some charter schools could close, McKenna said.
“There’s no way that we can continue to run high-quality programming and take care of the facility needs that we have over the next 10 to 15 years,” McKenna said.
Allen noted that charter schools don’t have the same safety net that traditional public schools have.
“If something goes wrong with their facility, the charter school has to figure out how to pay for it,” she said. “If something goes wrong in a traditional school … the district can subsidize those schools.” She added, “So charter schools should get more … cash because they have expenses that are different.”
Alvarez said she doesn’t believe charter schools are in danger of closing.
“If you’re not serving the students who are prioritized in Blueprint — so if you’re not serving as many low-income students, students with disabilities, multilingual learner students, right — there’s less funding,” she said.
Alvarez said a number of traditional public schools have had to close because of enrollment being “undersized.” But for charter schools there’s “built-in inequity” where “they’ve been able to withstand being smaller, undersized for a much longer period of time,” she said.
‘Not financially viable’
While Baltimore City has the largest share of charter schools in the state, charters in other counties say they’re struggling too.
Phoenix International School of the Arts (PISOTA) in Charles County opened two years ago. The school’s CEO and co-founder said it has struggled financially, both because of an increase in funds withheld by the district and the cost of transportation provided by the school.
The school district charges $1,000 per enrolled student — even though only 60% of students use the service — adding up to $250,000 a year.
“We are constantly having to, you know, just kind of rub coins together to make sure that ends are being met,” Jackson said.
Charles County is the only district that provides transportation to its charter schools, Allen said. Other charters don’t provide it because they can’t afford it, she said.
“It’s driving the school into closure,” Allen said. “It’s not financially viable, unfortunately.”
Charles County Public Schools noted that PISOTA agreed to the transportation costs in its contract. The school system also said it is reviewing possible future changes to transportation costs with the school moving forward.
The school district added that it is reviewing the new directive issued by the state superintendent “and will continue to follow the funding requirements under the law.”
When the Blueprint legislation was created, charter schools “were like that distant cousin that nobody wants to talk about,” Jackson said. “And so now here we are trying to reconcile, like, ‘Oh, well, what about the charter schools?’”
In Frederick County, the state board stepped into a dispute between the county’s school district and charter schools about funding withheld by the school district. In its December decision, the state board wrote that it is still the case under the Blueprint, as it was in the past, that “centralized services may not be thrust upon charter schools without good faith negotiation.”
In response to a question about the state board’s resolution on Thursday, the Frederick County school district said in an email that it has “no additional information to share at this time due to pending litigation.”
Charter schools in other districts have had positive relationships with their charter schools, Allen said, including Anne Arundel County. The school district’s spokesperson wrote in an email that “the new guidance from MSDE regarding charter school funding does not change how we are funding our charter and contract schools.”
The state steps in
The state board’s resolution Thursday directs that districts explain their methodology for calculating school funding, provide their budget data for fiscal year 2026, and clarify any differences in funding between charter and traditional public schools. The board will use this information to develop regulations governing charter school funding and requests that the information be provided by July 31.
The board’s resolution passed 13-0, with one absent.
As part of its resolution, the state board adopted a memo Thursday, issued by State Superintendent of Schools Carey Wright, stating that charter schools should receive their “full allocation” of Blueprint per-pupil funding, minus a “longstanding” 2% administrative fee kept by the school district. Charter schools can “buy back” services from the school system if they so choose, but any “additional withholding of Blueprint funds must be negotiated and agreed upon by the charter schools to maintain their day-to-day operations” the memo reads.
The memo reiterates a prior directive that the school system can withhold 25% of funds from traditional public schools. But with charter schools, it must negotiate the percentage of funds it centrally withholds and the services it provides.
“It is not consistent with State Board precedent for a school system to unilaterally withhold up to 25% of specified Blueprint funding streams from charter schools,” the superintendent’s memo reads. “Nor is it consistent with the Blueprint for charter schools to receive funding streams that are restricted to certain student populations (e.g., English learner education, special education) if they do not serve those populations.”
Asked if the memo was triggered by any specific problems in any particular counties, a spokesperson for MSDE told The Sun, “The memo is directed to all 24 school districts.”
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