For the last three years, the Southern Maryland Summit has focused on one goal:
Create a sustainable and mutually beneficial partnership between local public school systems and higher education partners to address the workforce challenges facing our educational systems and prepare our teachers to be effective leaders in the classroom.
As the work continues, the 2026 summit brought together over 90 regional leaders, higher education partners, state agencies, teacher leaders, and community stakeholders at USMSM to examine progress, deepen alignment, and chart the next steps in strengthening the educator pipeline. Southern Maryland’s educator workforce efforts have entered a new phase—one defined by coordinated implementation, shared accountability, and cross‑sector coherence.
The 2026 Summit marked a turning point: local school systems, higher education institutions, and MSDE are now fully aligned, with statewide policy and regional initiatives reinforcing one another. This year, the summit showcased operational systems, not just ideas.
The Southern Maryland region is clearly moving from ideas to alignment to action.
The goals of the 2026 Summit explicitly emphasized movement from alignment to action, including a deeper dive into programs, practices, and policies to advance teacher preparation pipelines.
Participants engaged in learning, reflection, and planning to:
Deepen understanding of current and emerging teacher preparation pathways
Identify high‑impact strategies to strengthen recruitment, development, and retention
Collaborate across sectors to build a sustainable, diverse educator workforce
Leave with actionable next steps to advance a locally grounded teacher pipeline
The 2026 Summit surfaced several critical insights about what it will take to build a sustainable educator workforce in Southern Maryland. These learnings highlight the importance of alignment, flexibility, teacher voice, and system‑level coherence.
Strengthen Mentoring and Wrap‑Around Supports.
Differentiated supports for each stage of licensure, especially new, conditionally-licensed teachers, and better alignment between LEA and IHE coursework.
Pathways must be flexible, job‑embedded, and competency‑based.
IHEs are redesigning coursework to align with LEA needs and statewide competencies, and there are footholds for strong, continuously aligned programs.
Working conditions are now central to pipeline strategy.
Retention cannot be solved without addressing working conditions.
Teacher voice is essential.
Teachers must help shape the systems designed to support them.
Collaboration is the region’s greatest strength - and greatest need.
Tri‑county alignment is the key to sustainability.
Conditional Teacher Supports
High School to Teacher Pathways
Support Personnel to Teacher Pathways
Clear, accessible maps of all pathways from high school to apprenticeships to program completion
Direct billing programs to alleviate out-of-pocket costs for potential teachers
Transfer and credit policies
Financial supports
Mentor training and ongoing support across LEAs
Individualized learning plans for conditionals
Shared mentor resources
Increase seats in Early College AAT
Support LEAs in joining the statewide RTAP
Align competencies with LEA expectations and MSDE standards
Explore differentiated schedules
Reduce out‑of‑contract expectations
Strengthen school‑based supports
Include teachers on panels, committees, and design teams
Gather regular feedback from conditionals, apprentices, and TAM students
Align job-embedded competencies with regional evaluation models (e.g., Denielson)
Co-develop shared rubrics for LEAs and IHEs
Engage in range finding for artifacts to ensure inter‑rater reliability across institutions
If you are interested in joining a workgroup, please email Sarah Lorek, smlorek@smcps.org.