Overview
Understanding the issues
The issues impacting public schools are complex and inextricably linked to other systemic issues. There is a tendency for politicians and others to blame Baltimore and the district for all its challenges. The reality is that there has been a history of government-endorsed, racist and systematic policy that has led to creating segregation, and then starving these same Black neighborhoods of resources such as jobs, public transportation, decent housing, and money for schools and their buildings. The following snapshots of the issues are designed to put current education issues into an historical perspective using a lens that avoids blaming the victims based on race and acknowledges how policies of the past have helped precipitate current problems.
Each issue represented here is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of available research. They are intended to give teachers, parents, and community members easy access to answers to common questions and concerns--answers that challenge the normal narrative around what is wrong with our schools.
School Funding
This slide deck gives an overview of school funding in Baltimore Cityand in the rest of the state.
In Baltimore 96% of schools qualify as having 40% or more young people living in poverty. Before the recent Blueprint legislation that passed in 2022, Maryland was spending 4.9 percent less money on students in low-wealth school districts than in wealthy ones. This despite the fact that it cost significantly more to educate students from communities that have concentrated poverty than it does to educate students from middle class families who can privately cover the costs of pre-school, extra-curricular activities, books, and tutoring, and who require fewer interventions around recovering from trauma.
Though the Maryland State Constitution (originally written in 1776) requires “a thorough and efficient System of Free Public Schools; and shall provide by taxation, or otherwise, for their maintenance," Baltimore and other low-income districts have failed to receive the funds needed to operate effectively.
In 1996, Maryland Circuit Court Judge Joseph Kaplan found in Bradford vs. MD State Board of Education that “the public school children in Baltimore City are not being provided with an education that is adequate when measured by contemporary educational standards.” The Bradford plaintiffs and the State entered into a consent decree under which the State agreed to "provide a meaningful and timely remedy...to meet the best interests of the school children of Baltimore City."
In 1999, Metis consulting group (a firm picked by the state itself) created a report that affirmed the need for greater funding. The school system submitted a plan explaining its need for an additional $260 million a year. This figure was affirmed by both Judge Kaplan and Metis to be an “adequate” per pupil expenditure.
In 2002, the legislature adopted the Thornton Commission recommendations which made this new additional $260 per year formula law. The challenge was that the formula did not have a dedicated funding stream. By 2004 the state was still dragging its feet in fulfilling the Thornton formula. Between 2004-2008, funding was increased to meet adequacy requirements gradually rather than immediately. From 2009-16, the state did not always increase for inflation. Even putting aside casino money and the state’s gradual, rather than immediate increase to adequacy post-Thornton, the education debt owed to BCPSS from the state can be conservatively totaled at 3.2 billion dollars!