million in funds to train abortion care providers as part of House Bill 937, or the Abortion Care Access Act. Hogan denied the request. COVID-19 pandemic Franchot criticized the Hogan administration's use of emergency contracts to pay for the state's COVID response efforts. He criticized the governor's purchase of 500 thousand COVID-19 test kits from South Korea, expressing concerns about the transparency and accountability in what happened to the tests. In February 2021, he wrote an op-ed to Maryland Matters criticizing the governor's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On July 1, 2022, Franchot announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19. Education Franchot supports having a post-Labor Day start for Maryland public schools, launching a "Let Summer Be Summer" campaign to move the start of the school year to after Labor Day in 2015. In August 2016, Franchot joined Governor Larry Hogan at a press conference where he signed an executive order requiring all public schools to begin classes after Labor Day. He opposed legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly in the 2019 legislative session that would give local school boards the choice to start school years earlier than Labor Day. During the campaign, Franchot said that he would support limiting or eliminating standardized testing in classrooms. He opposes the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, saying that he would rather shift the state's school curriculum to include teacher buy-ins and lessons that offer students "skill and knowledge about the modern economy". He also opposed tax reforms to pay for the Blueprint's proposals. He later reversed his opposition to the Blueprint, saying, "I was a bit of a skeptic because it didn't have any funding applied to it... I will implement what the legislature wants, but I was skeptical about the dollar amounts". Environment During the campaign, Franchot pledged to make Maryland the first net zero state for carbon emissions by 2030, protecting and cleaning the Chesapeake Bay, and building a statewide transit system. In April 2022, Franchot and seven other gubernatorial candidates signed a pledge with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network to support legislation to transition the state to use 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 and to remove trash incineration from the state's "clean energy" classification in 2023. Franchot has faced criticism from environmentalists for his support of proposals to widen the Capital Beltway and Interstate 270, and to rebuild the American Legion Bridge, but he defends his stance