BERLIN– Officials confirmed this week there is currently no state funding available for construction of a new Buckingham Elementary School.
Just weeks after a conceptual planning committee wrapped up discussions and reviewed a rendering of a state-of-the-art new building, county officials confirmed with the school system that the state was not slated to provide any funding for the roughly $70 million project.
“Going forward I believe the commissioners need to pause all further allocations for Buckingham Elementary School until the board of education is able to work through its issues with the state to ensure there’s funding for the school,” said Worcester County Commissioner President Chip Bertino.
School system officials said Tuesday they would be meeting with the Eastern Shore delegation and exploring the state’s appeal process.
“The state of Maryland needs to step up and provide the funding..,.,” said school board member Jon Andes. “Those kids, those parents, those staff members, that community deserves that school and it should be done. Whatever it takes.”
According to Bertino, county officials were surprised last Thursday with the news that there was no state funding for Buckingham.
“We found out about it because our Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Candace Savage was reviewing the CIP (capital improvement program) that had been submitted,” Bertino said. “In looking at it she realized the board of education had failed to include an amount for Buckingham Elementary School. I guess they thought we weren’t going to notice it.”
When county staff reached out to board of education staff, they were advised that the project wasn’t in the CIP because the state would not be providing funding for it.
Joe Price, the school system’s facilities planner, addressed the issue in a special school board meeting Tuesday. He said that last December, the IAC (Interagency Committee on School Construction) approved planning and design funding for Buckingham. In January, however, IAC officials reached out and said the project would not get state funding because of space available at “adjacent” schools—Showell Elementary School, Berlin Intermediate School and Ocean City Elementary School.
“They calculated there are 641 empty seats at those three schools,” he said, adding that the empty seats were tied to the fact that Worcester had an average classroom size of 16 while the state average classroom size was 25. “That made the Buckingham CIP funding zero because we didn’t need to do anything at Buckingham because we have 641 seats allegedly.”
He said he questioned the decision because those schools hadn’t been considered adjacent when a new Showell Elementary School was built.
“The answer I got was there’s different people looking at it now,” he said.
Price said that in the months following that decision state officials said they were looking at other ways the county could get funding for the school and suggested IAC’s Sustainable Community Projects policy. On Sept. 22, the school system was advised it was not eligible for that funding.
There was no discussion of state funding, however, at the Sept. 26 meeting of the Buckingham conceptual planning committee. Commissioner Eric Fiori, a member of that committee, said there were five committee meetings held.
“The latest cost estimate was approximately $68 million,” he said. “In last year’s estimate we were expecting $17 million of state funding and now we are hearing that it is zero dollars and that they’ve known since at least February this was likely the case. We have been moving forward with a conceptual design that relied on state funding to build and now, frankly put, we are back to square one. We are committed to building a new, state of the art school to replace Buckingham but state funding is really needed to pull this type of project off. I am disappointed that they’ve been sitting on this for so long, getting people excited only to pull the rug out from under us.”
Price said Tuesday he’d recommended not publicizing the funding dilemma “because it was going to go strange places.” He noted that there had been a back and forth with state officials all year. When asked if the situation was unprecedented, he said it was not.
“We’ve been through this,” Price said. “I went through it with another superintendent.”
He added that IAC staff had been working hard to identify potential funding. He stressed that the Buckingham issue was the result of the current interpretation of school construction practices by the state.
“So what you’re saying is rules and regulations didn’t change but someone is looking at them differently,” Andes said.
Andes told his peers he was the superintendent referred to by Price. He said that when he’d been superintendent, the state had not provided funding for Stephen Decatur Middle School. He said anyone who was familiar with Buckingham, which has four portable classrooms, knew that a new facility was needed. He added that because Worcester was considered a wealthy county based on the state formula, it was only eligible for 50% state funding on school construction. In reality though the county gets less than that because schools typically exceed the state’s per square foot maximum cost.
“The state’s only giving us 26% of what it actually costs to build a school,” he said. “That’s the average. That’s ludicrous. … The state is not paying their fair share of school construction for Worcester County. Period.”
He said he was sick of the state dictating things like what should be taught and what schools should be built.
“I’m tired of it,” he said. “They don’t give us the money we need to have to get it done. Whether it’s operating budget or capital budget the state needs to step up and do what’s right.”
Bertino said county officials could have spent the past several months advocating on behalf of Worcester County Public Schools had they known about the situation. Bertino said during the Maryland Association of Counties conference in Ocean City local officials had had countless opportunities to meet with state representatives.
“It was very disappointing to learn that the board of education knew about this since January or February,” Bertino said. “Nearly a full year’s gone by and the commissioners and the public weren’t even aware this was an issue.”
He added that when the county found out it was an issue, it was because of the diligence of county staff, not because of notification from the school system. He said the school board was advised of the funding problem after the county brought it up.
School board member Katie Addis said Tuesday she felt the board should have been informed earlier.
“We could’ve had conversations back in February about this,” she said. “Not that it would have changed anything but it would keep the board members in the loop.”
When she asked why the conceptual planning committee hadn’t been advised, Superintendent Lou Taylor said that was because information like that wasn’t typically shared with conceptual planning committees.
“That information in the past has never been shared until we have a concrete answer from the state,” he said.
As far as what comes next, Price said the school system would be exploring an appeal of the state funding decision. That is complicated, however, by the fact that the project is not listed in the CIP. He said the school system missed the deadline for the 2024 CIP appeal because at that time they thought the project was being funded. They left it out of the 2025 CIP because the funding was in question.
Taylor said he was meeting with Sen. Mary Beth Carozza, Del. Wayne Hartman and Del. Charles Otto Thursday to talk about the situation.
Bertino said the need for a new facility was a given but the lack of state funding was new information.
“We have been working in good faith with the board of education to build this school,” he said. “Now we have to reevaluate how to move forward.”
He expressed frustration that the school system had been aware of the funding challenges for nearly a year.
“As a community we need to determine how we move forward,” he said. “It’s incumbent on the board of education and the superintendent to come up with an alternate plan on how to move forward. As far as I’m concerned the ball is in the board of education’s court to determine the best way to move forward to resolve the issues with the state.”
