Before the sun rose on Feb. 9, Stephen Kurtz had already thrown a blazer over his shirt and tie and made the seven-mile trip from his home in Windsor Mill to the Catonsville campus of the Community College of Baltimore County.
Kurtz, 28, a student in the aviation program for air traffic control, met five others from the school at 7 a.m. to embark on a journey to Annapolis.
The six CCBC-Catonsville students, along with representatives from 15 other Maryland community colleges, including the three other CCBC campuses, were to meet state legislators to lobby for state funding for their schools.
"They seem more than willing to take time out of their schedule to talk to you," Kurtz said. "I know they're busy people, but the two I spoke to were very appreciative."
Kurtz spoke with Dels. James Malone, of District 12A, which includes Catonsville and Arbutus, and William Frank, of District 42, which includes Towson, about CCBC's increasing enrollment and stagnant funds.
From fiscal year 2007 to fiscal year 2011, CCBC-Catonsville's student population has grown from 16,257 to 20,966, according to a release from the school.
"We talked about the budget. We talked about how important the community college system is," said Malone, who graduated from then-Catonsville Community College in 1986. "It's so important to take care of community colleges."
Del. Steve DeBoy, who also represents District 12A, also met with several of the CCBC-Catonsville students and predicted that the state funding wouldn't decrease.
"I would say, if nothing else, it would stay level-funded from last year," said DeBoy, a 1990 Catonsville Community College graduate. "If they do reductions, it will be reductions to an increase."
DeBoy said he understands the need and the importance of community colleges, especially in this economic climate.
"They've taken on a tremendous amount of new students," DeBoy said. "They're not all coming out of high school."
"A lot of people are getting retrained," he added.
State Sen. Ed Kasemeyer, who represents District 12, which includes parts of Howard and Baltimore counties, noted that many states have seen a decrease in funding for higher education while Maryland's funding has remained steady.
He also noted that the state encourages community colleges not to raise tuition more than 3 percent annually by offering $2.5 million to be dispersed among the 16 schools
"Community colleges really have broad support in the legislature," Kasemeyer said. "People in the legislature are almost uniformly in support of what we can do for them."
That news should come as a relief to Kurtz, who moved to Baltimore County from New Jersey in June in order to study at a school with an accredited aviation program.
CCBC, Kurtz said, hopes to receive funding to renovate the former CCBC-Catonsville Library into a science, technology, engineering and math building that would move the aviation program from the applied science building.
School spokeswoman Hope Davis wrote in an email that the new facility would cost $38.9 million.
In its Fiscal Year 2013 Capital Budget Request, the school asked for $9.5 million in state, Davis wrote.
Though the governor's budget included only $1 million in state support for fiscal year 2013, the school received $12.9 million in pre-authorized funding for fiscal year 2014, Davis said.
To date, Davis wrote, the school has received $13.3 million in state and county funding to begin the first phase of the renovation.