SALISBURY, Md.- The Greater Salisbury Committee outlined challenges and solutions facing Wicomico County in its latest GSC 2030 Report.
Mike Dunn with the Greater Salisbury Committee says the county faces a range of issues, from affordable housing, improving water and sewer, and staffing the county’s fire stations.
The issue at the top of the list is increased funding for education.
“It’s always a mad rush to figure out how we can fund education, how we can invest in a new school. So we have taken an approach that says hey, let’s do this in a proactive way,” said Dunn. Let’s not react every budget time under the stress of the budget season. Let’s look as a community at the needs for funding and investing in education , and laid out in a way that all of us know what our needs are and it’s not pressure coming down to the budget each and every year.”
Brian Raygor, Chief Financial Officer with Wicomico County Public Schools says increased pressures on schools demands increased funding from local governments.
“Multilingual learners grew about 20% last year, and that brings some challenges as well. These are students that require specialized services and multilingual teachers and support with our schools so that they can find the kind of success that we want for all of our students,” said Raygor.
Raygor also says pressure from the state is a challenge. The state of Maryland is requiring that all public schools pay teachers at a base salary of $60,000.
“Before we get to providing services for students and paying salaries for employees, we have the cost of doing business that we need to take care of. We know our insurance rates are going up, utilities are going up the same things that every one in Wicomico county feels,” said Raygor.
The full report can be found here.
https://greatersalisbury.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/gsc-2030-report-final.pdf