The state board that oversees implementation of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future wants to delay requirements to increase in-school planning time amid nationwide teacher shortages.

The Accountability and Implementation Board (AIB) unanimously passed a motion in a special meeting Friday to slow the eight-year increase in what the Blueprint calls “collaborative time.” Local districts were supposed to submit their initial plans by this July.

Right now, Maryland teachers spend around 20% of their school day prepping individually for lessons. The Blueprint would boost it to 40% to encourage working in groups and analyzing student outcomes.

But AIB Executive Director Rachel Hise said districts would need to hire 25% more teachers to make that change.

“That equates to between 12,000 and 15,000 additional teachers,” Hise said in Friday’s meeting. “And the current condition in our schools is that we don't have enough certified teachers for our existing needs.”

In December, Governor Wes Moore called for a revised version of the Blueprint, including the delay in collaborative time, in his address to the Maryland Association of Counties. According to reporting from the Baltimore Banner, Moore said he wants districts to focus on recruiting and retaining teachers first.

Local superintendents echoed those calls, and sent a letter to state leaders in November urging them to make Blueprint implementation more feasible and effective.

Hise said Maryland is still feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on teacher shortages. There are over 6,000 teachers statewide who aren’t fully certified — and over 2,000 vacant positions.

“It's not a new thing that we have conditionally-certified teachers in the state,” Hise said. “That's been an ongoing challenge, but since the pandemic, the percentage has significantly increased.”

In the past two years, state lawmakers have passed bills to create pathways for teachers to more easily become fully-certified, and to boost high school student interest in becoming educators.

But Hise said the state hasn’t started to see the effects of those changes yet.

“Hopefully we're almost to the top of the curve, and some of these efforts are going to start to yield more results,” she said.

Board member Justin Robinson said the AIB and other state leaders need to make sure pushing the timeline back isn’t the only change.

“We have to make sure that when the deadline does come, that we're not in the same position,” he said.