Baltimore City charter school leaders say they are owed $30 million more for next school year than the city schools has budgeted to give them.

The ongoing dispute between Baltimore’s school system and its 31 charter schools came to another turning point this month when Maryland State School Superintendent Carey Wright sent a memo to the state’s school systems telling them to follow certain rules when deciding how to fund charters.

“It has come to my attention that that charter school funding put forth by local boards of education may not be entirely consistent with recent state board decisions,” Wright wrote in the May 1 letter.

She went on to provide guidance on how to calculate the funding for charter schools — a formula Baltimore City Public Schools doesn’t follow.

The school system, meanwhile, contends that it’s following state law and didn’t say it would comply with Wright’s guidance.

Charter schools are privately operated but publicly funded. In Maryland, a group that wants to operate a charter school must get the approval of the school system where they are located.

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The school system must pay a portion of its total funding to the charters, but how much charter schools will get and how it is calculated has been disputed for decades.

Wright’s guidance said school systems can reduce total funding to charters by 2% to cover administrative costs. City schools currently takes out 5.5%, McKenna said.

“They have given us the guidance. This thing should be resolved,” said Will McKenna, executive director of Afya Baltimore Inc., a nonprofit that runs The Tunbridge School and The Belair-Edison School, two city charters.

Fourteen charter school operators, who run 18 of the city’s 31 charters, sent a letter last week to city schools disputing the funding allocations they received this spring. They are now in the process of setting up a meeting, McKenna said.

The Maryland State Board of Education issued a decision in December that said that charter schools should receive 98% of the amount per student that a regular public school gets.

In Baltimore, charters were receiving less. But when the budgets for city schools were released for next year, charter schools found that the system had not adhered to the December decision. Wright’s memo appeared to reinforce the December decision, which was interpreted differently by the city schools and the charters.

The Baltimore City school board passed its budget for the 2025-2026 school year Tuesday night, apparently without adjusting the charter school funding.

“Our funding formula complies with state law and the Blueprint for Maryland‘s Future. It is unclear how the charter schools that have taken this action calculated their $30 million estimate,” Baltimore City Schools said in a statement.

“What is clear is that charter schools should have to pay their fair share for essential services they receive,” the statement said, explaining that the school system is paying retirement health benefits and the cost of litigation, among other items.

“Traditional school students represent 80 percent of our enrollment, and they should not have to shoulder the cost of services for the other 20 percent of students in schools they do not attend,” the statement said.

One of the biggest areas of disagreement between the city and its charter schools what is percent of their total funding city schools should be allowed to skim off as an administrative fee.

The school system argues, for instance, that it pays for the cost of negotiating contracts with the teachers union, as well as other central office expenditures that the charters should pay a portion of.

“They believe in a large central office. They want charters to pay for that large central office,” McKenna said. “We don’t exist to cover their central office.”

The state education department did not comment on what might happen if the city school system leadership does not follow Wright’s guidance. The department said in a statement that Wright’s memo was a reminder for school systems to give charters fair funding “with an emphasis on transparency and good faith negotiations with charter schools.”

The city school system did not comment on the Wright memo or whether the budget passed this week has been adjusted.

The dispute over funding was exacerbated when the state changed how it funded public schools under the Blueprint for Maryland‘s Future. Wright clarified how that money would be distributed to charters in her guidance.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.