Half of Maryland’s school districts still not at $60K teacher salary threshold

by William J. Ford, Maryland Matters
March 10, 2026

With just months until they have to meet a July 1 deadline to raise teacher salaries to a $60,000 minimum, only about half of Maryland’s 24 school districts have reached the threshold and the rest are scrambling to get there, education officials said Monday.

“We got questions from the LEA [local education agencies] like, ‘Is there a waiver process? How could we get an exception?’” said Rachel Hise, executive director of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation Board. “And the answer was, ‘No, there isn’t a waiver process. This is a statutory requirement by July 1 of 2026.”

Hise said local school officials are still working on their fiscal 2027 budgets and negotiations with their teacher unions.

“I would say right now we are cautiously optimistic that most, if not all of them, will get there,” she said.

Her comments came ahead of a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education and Economic Development hearing on the AIB, among other agencies. Hise was joined by Isiah “Ike” Leggett, chair of the AIB, which is charged with overseeing implementation of the Blueprint by the state’s school districts.

The $60,000 minimum teacher salary is one of the many requirements of the Blueprint. According to data from the AIB, the average teacher salary during the 2025-26 school year was below $60,000 at schools in all nine Eastern Shore counties, along with Harford, Frederick and Garrett counties.

Hise mentioned one school system, which she didn’t name during the less than 15 minutes of her hearing, that may have the most difficulty in meeting that mandate.

Somerset County is the only jurisdiction with an average teacher salary below $55,000 this year. Its school board has a budget work session scheduled for March 24.

State Superintendent Carey Wright, who was in Annapolis for a different budget hearing Monday, said in a brief interview that local superintendents and chief financial officers continue to assess their finances amid tight budgets.

“I think they’re doing the very best that they can to meet the needs of everything that they’ve got going on in their district[s],” she said. “It’s just hard, and you’ve got to make some tough decisions.”

Officials in Cecil County public schools are doing just that.

Denise Sopa, chief financial officer for Cecil County schools, said in a brief phone interview Monday that the county will be able make the $60,000 minimum. But in order to do that and keep its fiscal 2027 budget balanced, Sopa said the school system will have to cut about 85 positions. In an email, she said the cuts will likely include 56 teachers, 19 support staff and 10 administrators.

During the subcommittee budget hearing, the state Department of Legislative Services recommended the Blueprint board should outline what measures can be “taken for any LEAs that did not meet the July 1, 2026, deadline to increase minimum salaries to $60,000.”

Because the salary is required by state law, one step the AIB can take to enforce compliance is to withhold funding for school districts until they meet the salary threshold. Hise said specific criteria, including the possibility of withholding funds, will be laid out in the spring.

Meanwhile, Leggett summarized the work of the AIB for the subcommittee and how the Blueprint “is not a one-size-fits-all operation.”

“We are trying to ensure that all the counties are meeting the standards,” he said. “We’re trying to do this within the fidelity that we have, the flexibility that we have … and in order to ensure that many of the counties around the state are responding as appropriately as possible.”

The nonpartisan research organization, NORC at the University of Chicago, continues to work on an interim evaluation of the overall Blueprint plan. An interim report is due to the AIB by Dec. 1, and based on those findings, the Blueprint board must submit a report to the governor and General Assembly by Jan. 15, 2027.

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