Update, 5:15pm: Seven Baltimore schools could be closing their doors for good at the end of this academic year. District officials recommended at Tuesday’s school board meeting that the contracts for four schools run by outside operators not be renewed. Three other city-run schools were also on the proposed closure list.
Among those slated for closure were Baltimore Liberation Diploma Plus and Baltimore Antioch Diploma Plus. Both are alternative high schools that serve many over-aged students who don’t have enough credits to graduate. Both also had standardized test passage rates in the low to upper teens.
Baltimore Talent High School, whose operator is Johns Hopkins University, was also recommended for closure. The school was recommended for closure last year, but given a one-year extension when the board was deadlocked on its fate. But this time, acting Superintendent Tisha Edwards’ staff said the school’s academics had not improved enough. Only 45 percent of its students scored proficient or advanced on the standardized English exam and only 33 percent made the grade in math.
District officials also said Baltimore Talent was ineffective in college and career readiness, a major component of the new Common Core curriculum for schools nationwide.
For the first time, school officials looked at things such as how many students took the SAT or passed advanced placement class exams in making their recommendations.
The fourth operator-run school was Bluford Drew Jemison Academy West, an all-boys STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) school. Although attendance at the school is nearly 98 percent, test scores are low and enrollment dropped by 15 percent.
Those four were among 13 facilities run by outside operators that had applied for renewed contracts. Those contracts generally run for three or five years.
Edwards and her staff also recommended closing three district operated schools, Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts, Baltimore Community High School and Grove Park Elementary Middle School. Grove Park was to be renovated in the district’s 10-year school construction plan. But district officials now say because Grove Park has only 300 Pre-K through 8th grade students and is close to two other schools scheduled for renovations in the first two years of the construction plan, it should close in 2017.
The proposed closures are the result of district officials’ annual assessment of all schools in terms of structure, capacity, utilization of space and academics.
Board Vice Chair David Stone worried that Bluford Drew Jemison’s students would not have a similar place to go until two new all-boys schools open over the next two years.
Edwards said she empathizes with the students, but decisions shouldn’t be made based on sympathy. “They need to be able to go to college, they need to be able to excel and just having them in a school every day with a suit and a tie is not good enough. Stronger options are available to them in other schools.”
Edwards’ office offered other tweaks to the 10-year plan. Among them:
- Speed up renovations of Vivian Thomas Medical Arts Academy High School to accommodate students displaced from Baltimore Talent and Augustus Fells Savage.
- Allow Excel Academy, once recommended for closure, to remain open and expand it to middle school grades to take some of the overflow of closed schools.
- Move the renovation of Friendship Academy of Science and Technology from year three to year two of the plan
- Cut the number of schools planned for the Cherry Hill Community from three to two.
The outside operators whose contracts were not renewed get to present their cases to the board November 14. The school board will hold public hearings Monday, Dec. 2 at Digital Harbor High School and Tuesday, Dec 10 at the district’s North Avenue headquarters. The board will vote on all of the recommendations December 17.
Posted 10:16 am: