State Funding Per Pupil
The state’s per-pupil funding for Worcester County Public Schools increased 41.5% between fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2024. That’s the fourth largest increase among all 24 Maryland public school districts. Worcester County has the lowest per-pupil funding of all the districts in the state.
Per-pupil funding is based on a formula that utilizes the district’s total enrollment and the characteristics of its students. It’s too soon to know what the per-pupil funding level will be in the later years of the Blueprint.
Here’s the district’s initial Blueprint Implementation Plan. And here’s what the state Accountability and Implementation Board – which oversees the Blueprint – had to say about Worcester County Public Schools’ Blueprint Implementation Plan:
Strengths:
- The district proposed “a comprehensive set of strategies” to increase pre-K enrollment.
- Worcester County has a strong professional development program for teachers. For example, English teachers collaborate to ensure consistent grading, and the district may want to adopt that same approach in other subject areas.
- The district is creating a handbook to guide interventions for students in K-12 who need extra help learning critical content.
- The district has a strong career counseling plan.
Needs improvement:
- The district may need to provide more support to teachers seeking National Board Certification.
- While the district was developing a comprehensive literacy plan, it has not developed a comprehensive math plan.
- Worcester County needs to be more specific about how it plans to help English language learners.
- Jerry Zremski