State Funding Per Pupil
The state’s per-pupil funding for Wicomico County Public Schools increased 31.8% between fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2024. That’s the fourth smallest increase among all 24 Maryland public school districts.
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 Wicomico Public Schools’ Blueprint Implementation Plan:
Strengths:
- Wicomico County works well with private providers to help students experiencing homelessness, a disability or those who are learning English.
- The district plans to improve teacher diversity by partnering with higher education institutions including Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Wicomico will also create a mentorship program for paraprofessionals.
- The district plans to diversify its teacher recruiting team in a way that could be a model for other districts.
- Particularly in low-performing schools, the district outlined plans to identify areas of growth early on in students’ academic careers in order to improve performance in later grades. Math and reading professional development coaches will provide teachers with consistent feedback to improve teaching methods.
- Wicomico has strong relationships with higher education institutions and employers to support post-college and career readiness.
Needs improvement:
- The county needs to focus more on understanding families’ needs to provide targeted support during the pre-K registration process.
- Wicomico needs to increase training for National Board Certification facilitators beyond the required virtual training course. Certification facilitators recruit potential teacher candidates seeking the most respected professional certification available in education.
- Like most districts, Wicomico needs to develop a career path to encourage the importance of improving teaching and learning rather than focusing on National Board Certification or salary incentives.
- The district needs to follow through on its idea of building a dashboard to monitor attendance and course credit data related to high school graduation to support students who aren’t on track to graduate on time.
– By Lia Gorbach