Maryland General Assembly 2026: Education Bills, Good and Bad
- Fellow Editors
- 12 minutes ago
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It's deja vu all over again in the Maryland General Assembly as legislators propose laws that affect education. The session began January 14th, but already approximately 600 bills in all areas were pre-filed according to the state's legislative website. Last year, at the end of session, over 3,000 had been proposed. Here is the website: Legislation - Charts
As we browsed the site last week, we found approximately 15 bills that could make great changes in laws affecting Maryland's public-school systems and who controls them. Bills also address protecting women's sports and locker rooms, protecting children against students who are violent or who have criminal charges, and transparency of school system budgets and board of education meetings. Here are some of these bills:
SENATE BILL 50 - FAIRNESS IN GIRLS' SPORTS ACT - Proposed by State Senator Mary Beth Carozza, Republican, and Ron Watson, Democrat.
This law would require that interscholastic and intramural, junior varsity and varsity school teams are designated by sex (female or male) and that they prohibit members of the other sex from participating in that designated sport. It would also prevent schools from being sued for maintaining sports designated for female athletes exclusively but also allowing students to bring civil action if their sport designated exclusively for their sex has members of the other sex participating.
A similar bill is House Bill 0063, FAIRNESS IN GIRLS SPORTS ACT is sponsored by Delegates Szeliga, Arikan, Chisolm, Fisher, Grammar, M. Morgan and Nawrocki. This bill not only addresses the maintenance of sports designated by sex but also requires that locker rooms are designated for specific sexes.
PROBABILITY OF EITHER BILL PASSING: 50/50. Why? In the past two years, bills such as this one have been proposed but Democrats have stood in the way every time, even to the extent of blocking these bills from getting out of committees, once again proving they have no desire to protect women's sports. With the petulant mean girl Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary gone as she runs for Howard County executive, a huge hurdle has been removed. Having Mr. Watson as a co-sponsor is also a good sign for SB 50. Plus, these are common sense bills.
SCHOOL SAFETY: House bills 123 and 198 are sponsored by Delegate Griffith, Republican from Cecil and Harford Counties. HB 123 addresses the issues of reporting offenses by students dually enrolled in higher education and school systems to education officials. These are "reportable offenses" that involve criminal acts done off school property. These could be crimes of violence and other enumerated crimes. These offenses MUST be reported to the local Superintendent or the Principal of the school attended by the student. Previously, this was not done, leading to several school systems not knowing of offenses committed by students dually enrolled in their system, including those who had committed crimes of violence. This put teachers and other students in danger.
HB 198 requires law enforcement to notify the State's Attorney if a student is a suspect in an investigation of certain offenses and if they are no longer a suspect. The State's Attorney must then notify the superintendent or designee.
PROBABILITY OF EITHER BILL PASSING: Considering recent events where schools didn't realize they had students roaming their hallways were criminals or had been accused of serious crimes, one might think this is a slam dunk for passage. But we must remember that Maryland is a state that has protected juvenile offenders, even violent ones, to the detriment of everyone else.
HOUSE BILL 14-County Boards of Education -Bullying, Harassment, or Intimidation- Information Collection and Reporting Requirements -Delegate Foley, Democrat, Montgomery County
This bill will require school systems to post before January 31 of each year, information about the number of incidents of bullying, harassment, or intimidation reported to the State Board by the County Board. The State Board will then have to report to the Senate Education, Energy, and Environment committee by March 31 of each year.
These incidents can be based on any perceived harassment including race, national origin, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, ancestry, physical attributes, socioeconomic status, familial status, or physical or mental ability or disability. It can be reported by a student, parent, guardian, or close adult relative of a student, or by a staff member.
PROBABILITY OF PASSING: Considering that people can be reported in Maryland for "hate speech" it is likely that this bill will pass. While this may seem like a good thing, the vagueness of what constitutes bullying, harassment, etc. is troubling.
HB 154/SB 0999- Local Boards of Education Transparency Act - Delegate Korman, Democrat, Montgomery County, Senator Kagan, Democrat, Montgomery County. This bill would require Maryland county school boards to provide the same enhanced transparency as certain state agencies, including live video streaming of meetings and online posting of agendas and minutes.
The new requirements for school boards would be that meeting agendas will have to be posted online and will have to include summaries of documents the board will vote on and an indication of whether they plan to go into closed session. Meeting minutes will also have to be posted online within two business days after approval and must be kept online for at least five years.
Live video streaming of all open/public portions of the meetings will be required on the school board's website and all videos must be saved and available online for at least five years (most state agencies only require videos to be kept for one year.)
If you think that the two Democrat sponsors are just interested in transparency, you might be wrong. It is more likely that this bill is presented as a virtue signal against county boards who have voted against the progressive agenda.
PROBABILITY OF PASSING: This bill seems like a slam dunk since the state already has the Open Meetings Act for all other agencies and it is sponsored by two Democrats. It would have been nice if the bill had also required school boards to enact fair public comment regulations.
SENATE BILL 70: Task Force on Funding and Student Population Growth - Sponsored by Senators Lewis Young - Democrat - Frederick County and Senator Justin Ready, Republican, Frederick and Carroll Counties.
This bill would establish a task force to analyze challenges related to school enrollment counts, student population growth and education funding. The task force would begin meeting on July 1, 2026 and present a report to the Governor by December 15, 2026.
This is certainly a reaction to Maryland discovering school districts were receiving state education money for students who did not actually attend school in those districts. This happened because of outdated or inaccurate enrollment data being used in the state’s funding formulas. Districts reported students as enrolled even if they had moved, transferred, or stopped attending. In some districts this was hundreds of students. The problem was magnified by the Blueprint for Maryland's Future funding formula. This cost the state millions of dollars.
PROBABILITY OF PASSING: It is likely that this bill will pass and the task force will be created. The problem lies in the fact that so many members of the task force must be appointed by the Governor's office. This has been a problem in the past particularly since the Task Force on the Oversight and Implementation of the Juvenile Services Education Program (JSEP) failed to file a report on time in 2025, thus allowing abuses with JSEP to continue. They didn't report on time since the Governor's Office didn't make appointments on time. Let's hope this task force is more efficient.
SENATE BILL 147 Education- Agreements, Procurement Contracts, and Memoranda of Understanding-Reporting and Publication - Sponsored by Senator Ready-Carroll and Frederick Counties.
This bill would require that local school systems disclose in a public manner in-kind agreements, procurement contracts, memoranda of understanding entered into by education systems in the state.
The bill was inspired by the fact that while school systems will claim they don't teach certain topics or follow certain social mandates such as gender ideology, DEI, specific political beliefs, etc. they often hide these initiatives in goods or services provided by outside groups who present ideas to staff and or students.
Even worse, if the public can't see the district's contracts, they can't determine any conflicts of interest or favoritism in the hiring of outside groups for goods or services. And, as we have seen in Milwaukee, Minnesota, the public can't even be sure if the company getting the contract is real.
For example, school systems bring in "consultants" all the time. But, unless you see the name of the consultant and their contract, you don't know much about what the consultant did and how much he/she got paid. And, you won't know if that consultant was hired because he/she was a family member or had other influence over a board member or Superintendent.
This bill will help with that.
PROBABILITY OF PASSAGE: In light of recent investigations of fraud in Minnesota and even in Maryland, this bill might stand a decent chance of passing. Of course, we never know. Democrats hate exposing fraud.
SENATE BILL 218/HOUSE BILL 0288: Two of the biggest bills of the year may be Senate Bill 218/House Bill 0288. State Superintendent of Schools- Prolonged State of Emergency- Authority to Declare. These bills don't have Delegates or Senators as sponsors. They were requested by the Maryland State Department of Education and then proposed by the EEE Committee chair. When you read what these bills are for, you will see why.
SB 218 authorizes the State Superintendent of Schools to declare a prolonged state of emergency when an event prevents regular, in‑person attendance at public schools for a specified period. This gives the Superintendent clearer legal power to respond to extended disruptions—such as natural disasters, public health crises, or other emergencies—without waiting for broader statewide declarations. (Is anyone sensing something familiar here?)
Maryland’s SB 218 sits in a long line of legislation dealing with school emergencies, but it takes a noticeably different approach. Instead of focusing on planning requirements or funding adjustments, it creates a new, centralized authority for declaring a prolonged school‑specific emergency. That makes it more targeted and more operational than earlier bills.
Earlier bills—like the 2017 update to Maryland’s Emergency Planning Guidelines—focused on local school system responsibilities and compliance with safety standards. Those laws required MSDE to publish and update emergency planning guidance, including accommodations for students with disabilities.
SB 218, by contrast, gives the State Superintendent explicit power to declare a “prolonged state of emergency” when in‑person attendance becomes impossible. Earlier legislation dealt with general emergency preparedness—evacuation plans, ADA‑compliant safety procedures, and routine emergency planning cycles.
SB 218 is narrower but deeper: it applies specifically to events that prevent regular, in‑person school attendance for a defined period, such as pandemics, natural disasters, or infrastructure failures.SB 218 breaks from that pattern by creating a centralized, state‑level authority for declaring prolonged school emergencies.
One important difference is who holds the power. In earlier bills, local school systems were responsible for most emergency decisions, and the state provided guidance but rarely exercised direct authority.
Why now? There are several reasons. Since this bill was filed in September, 2025, it aligns with the other power grabs that MSDE demanded in 2025. Earlier this year, they forced a change in the appeal process when a local school board wanted to fire their superintendent. They talked legislators into giving the State Superintendent a longer, unlimited appeal process where she could forestall the decisions of local school boards, something clearly an assault on local control.
This bill seems to be the Maryland State Department of Education once again demanding sole power and discretion over what local districts do. Therefore, it subverts the will of the people who elect local school boards to make those decisions. It puts that power into the hands of an unelected bureaucrat.
It is also unnecessary since the Governor of the State controls the imposition of the State of Emergency declarations in Maryland. Good or bad, at least the Governor is elected.
PROBABILITY OF PASSING: Considering how quickly the elected officials gave in to the State Superintendent's desire to change state law just because she didn't like what a local school system did, this bill will pass easily. It will further erode the power of our elected school boards.
There are other education bills on the docket. Some of them have to do with recording students in a special education classroom (SB 051), limiting appeals to 90 days (SB 0174), requiring districts to have cell phone policies (SB 79), preventing school resource officers from having sex with students (SB 81), start times for Charter Schools (SB 103), and adoption of an excellence in civics program ( SB 0204).
Information on those bills and where to testify can be found at Legislation - Senate, Legislation - House. You must create an account to use the site. From there, you can learn how to support or oppose those bills.
Jan Greenhawk, Author
January 18, 2026
Jan Greenhawk is a former teacher and school system administrator for over thirty years. She has two grown children and lives with her husband in Maryland. She also spent over twenty-five years coaching/judging gymnastics and coaching women’s softball. She was a former county Teacher of the Year and one of five finalists for Maryland Teacher of the Year.
This article was originally featured on the Easton Gazette.
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