The Fight for Funding: Concerned parents take to Ocean City Boardwalk to make their voices heard

OCEAN CITY, Md. – To continue the conversations on the Worcester County education budget, parents took to the busy ocean city boardwalk to make sure their concerns are heard.

Sounding the alarm on the budget that they want fully funded by their commissioners for the 2025 fiscal year, concerned parent, Mary Hathaway, shared the significance behind their rallying calls.

“MOE is not for me. MOE means Maintenance of Effort; it’s the bare minimum that our state requires our county officials to fund us at,” Hathaway said. “We’re just trying to say that that’s not enough. We want summer academies, we want all these enrichment programs, we want great experiences for our kids, and at MOE levels, that’s just not possible.”

According to 2022-2023 data, 73% of eligible Worcester County schools earned a 4-star rating. Compared to the rest of the state, only 37% of schools across Maryland earned 4 or 5 stars.

In order to keep those stats up, Kate Hulme, said small class sizes and after school and summer programs need to remain the norm for students.

“Our kids are brilliant, and they thrive in the smaller class sizes that Worcester County schools have been providing,” Hulme said. “We would like to continue to offer that to them and the only way to do so is with a fully funded budget.”

What started as a plan in the Worcester United group on Facebook finally came to fruition on the bustling boardwalk. Hathaway said this rally will hopefully be the catalyst to future conversations between the community and county officials.

“Every member of Worcester United is a stake holder in our community,” Hathaway said. “We are parents, we are teachers, we have a huge number of alumni, and we love Worcester County schools. If we don’t speak up, who’s going to?”