Maryland has 1,463 census tracts
A census tract is a Census Bureau-drawn statistical neighborhood, typically 1,200–8,000 residents (avg ~4,000), with boundaries stable enough to support decade-long demographic comparisons. ENOUGH Act eligibility is decided tract-by-tract: every eligibility, methodology, and grantee question on this page reduces to "which of the 1,463 tracts qualify?"
SB482 (Ch. 408, 2024) requires two tests, both passing
The ENOUGH Act defines an eligible community as a census tract that satisfies both a poverty rate test and a school concentration of poverty test:
School test: served by a public school with a Concentration of Poverty Grant (CPG) percentage of at least 75%.
The 75% school threshold is statutorily fixed — it is the lower of the two CPG cutoffs MSDE uses (the other being 80%, which historically determined CPG funding eligibility). The poverty test is what the Secretary has discretion over, through the methodology choice below.
The four moving parts that build eligibility
Eligibility for any given year is the intersection of a tract poverty source and a school CPG roster. Here are the discrete inputs:
Every Maryland school's CPG percentage was published by MSDE for the FY27 (2026 cycle) eligibility list. Of the 287 schools at ≥75%, 217 would have been eligible under the legacy 80% rule and 70 are newly eligible because SB482 lowered the school threshold to 75%. Those 70 schools are the supply-side expansion built into the statute itself.
699 tracts intersect at least one school at ≥75% CPG
This is the maximum possible universe of eligible tracts under any methodology. Any tract outside this 699 cannot be made eligible regardless of how the poverty test is set, because the school test (≥75% CPG, statutory) cannot be relaxed.
Two things to notice. First, the ceiling is roughly 48% of all Maryland tracts (699 of 1,463) — meaning the school threshold alone narrows the universe by more than half. Second, every historically-eligible tract sits inside this ceiling, so the entire methodology question is about which slice of these 699 also passes the poverty test.
The poverty test: three options, three different counts
The policy decision is which version of the poverty test to apply against the 699-tract ceiling. From most permissive to most restrictive:
Reading the funnel: Of the 699-tract ceiling, the restrictive test (poverty rate alone) finds 156. Adding the MOE provision with the prior-year safeguard adds 25 more — communities where statistical noise alone shouldn't decide eligibility, but two consecutive years of high estimates support inclusion. Dropping the prior-year guard adds another 140, but those tracts include cases where 2023 rates were in the single digits and the upper bound is purely an artifact of small-sample uncertainty.
Switch the scenario radio below to load any of these into the table and map.
Full methodology detail (click to expand)
1. Standard Methodology (156 tracts) — Of these, 100 have no active grantee serving their specific tract. In six counties, none of the eligible tracts are within an active grantee's service area: Cecil (4 tracts), Wicomico (4), Anne Arundel (3), Harford (1), Kent (1), and St. Mary's (2). Some of these counties do have ENOUGH grantees (e.g. One Annapolis and the AA County Partnership in Anne Arundel), but those grantees serve tracts that fall below the 30% poverty threshold — there is no geographic overlap with the eligible tracts. Six Baltimore City tracts lost eligibility this cycle as their poverty rates fell below 30%.
2. MOE Provision with Prior-Year Safeguard (+25 → 181 total) — The 25 new tracts are concentrated in Baltimore City (11), Baltimore County (5), and Prince George's County (4). The dual-year requirement ensures these are communities with demonstrated sustained poverty, not statistical artifacts. This is the recommended methodology.
3. Upper Bound Only — No Prior-Year Requirement (+140 → 321 total) — More than doubles the MOE expansion but includes tracts with 2023 rates as low as single digits — communities where the high upper bound reflects large margins of error from small sample sizes, not necessarily sustained poverty. The largest expansions would be in Prince George's (+38), Baltimore City (+35), and Montgomery County (+22).
| Scenario | Tracts | Added | Served | Unserved | New vs 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (pov>30%) | 156 | — | 56 | 100 | 55 |
| + MOE w/ prior year | 181 | +25 | 62 | 119 | 62 |
| + Upper bound (no prior yr) | 321 | +140 | 88 | 233 | 201 |
Click a county row to filter the tract-level view. Table shows only counties with eligible tracts under this scenario.