Favorable
Committee: Appropriations
HB 0351
The Maryland Catholic Conference offers this testimony in SUPPORT of the Senator James E. “Ed” DeGrange Nonpublic Aging Schools Program in the FY 2025 capital budget.
The Catholic Conference is the public policy representative of the three (arch)dioceses serving Maryland, which together encompass over one million Marylanders. Statewide, their parishes, schools, hospitals and numerous charities combine to form our state’s second largest social service provider network, behind only our state government. We also offer this testimony on behalf of the families of more than 50,000 students served by over 150 PreK-12 Catholic schools in Maryland.
The DeGrange Nonpublic Aging Schools Program provides grants to nonpublic schools for deferred maintenance, aging building improvements and infrastructure renovation, assisting tens of thousands of Maryland students annually. The Governor has provided $3.5 million in the proposed budget, the same amount the program has been funded at yearly since its inception. It was named as a legacy program for Senator Ed DeGrange in 2018.
The vast majority of Maryland’s approximately 135,000 kindergarten-12 nonpublic school students attend a school that is eligible for this program, by virtue of the fact that their schools charge a tuition lower than the state per-pupil average expenditure for public school students. The program has made a statewide impact and is incredibly popular with administrators in every county and legislative district.
Students and their schools rely on these grants yearly for deferred maintenance of aging buildings. Many nonpublic schools meet one or both of the following criteria that yielded a higher grant amount: a.) a 20% or greater FARMs-eligible student enrollment or b.) a school facility that is 50 or more years old. Lower-income and/or older schools have been able to complete maintenance projects or security upgrades that they’ve often had to postpone for several years due to budgetary constraints.
Specifically, tens of thousands of lower and middle-income families are served by Maryland’s Catholic schools every year. Thus, the Maryland Catholic Conference offers its support for this program as a means of supporting those students, families and schools in need, as it truly provides a safer, more productive school environment. Maryland’s Catholic school community emphatically thanks this committee for its past support of the Nonpublic Aging Schools Program and asks that it please continue that support in FY 2025.