If Baltimore’s schools CEO, reflecting on an unprecedented 10 years leading the system, leaves a letter in the top drawer of her desk for incoming leader Jermaine Dawson, it might include this to-do list of unfinished business.
Right away:
Keep your eye on finances, lobby hard for funding in Annapolis, and employ strict discipline in spending. Learn to say no — firmly — when people want their pet projects funded.
Keep working on:
Fourth-grade math scores are rising but need more attention. Services for special needs students need improvement, too.
Big projects ahead:
Examine the complex intersection of school choice, enrollment trends and transportation. Not all students have access to the academic programs they need within a reasonable bus ride from home.
Over a decade, Sonja Santelises has penned a list of accomplishments, but she leaves behind a school system with a host of challenges. Even some of her fans believe the next CEO faces significant hurdles: Nearly half of students are considered chronically absent, test scores remain low, and the school choice system hasn’t delivered on its promise of equal opportunity.
Santelises’ belief that city kids, even those who live in concentrated poverty, are worthy of the same high academic standards as suburban students helped raise test scores, longtime educators and former administrators say.
But they’re not rising fast enough.
Dawson, the incoming CEO, said at a press conference on Monday that he’s watched the progress in Baltimore for years. He is currently the deputy superintendent of academic services for the School District of Philadelphia, a system more than twice the size of Baltimore’s. He also held jobs in school districts in Houston and Birmingham, Alabama.
The next CEO should try to keep a stable crew of high-level staff at the central office, said Linda Chinnia, a former chief academic officer who went on to chair the city school board after her retirement. Constant turnover at the central office leaves principals and staff uncertain about whom to trust when problems arise.
“When you are at a school and you don’t know who to call, that is very discouraging,” Chinnia said. “We can’t afford that kind of transition for our kids.”
Santelises said her successor also needs to keep the system financially stable, an area where she believes her team has made progress, though that balance remains fragile.
“Supermarkets don’t make money because the margins are so thin and any little thing can tip it over,” Santelises said. “Urban public schools are that way.”
Everyone from politicians to community members seeking money for pet programs can push the system to a tipping point, she added.
“And if you let the jackals back in, who want money for everything, we will be back” in the same place, she said. “You get salespeople who want their thing in. And you have schools who talk to board members on the side who think their things should not be cut.”
If a new CEO doesn’t say no, she said, and assumes there is enough money in the budget to handle the requests, they can quickly face financial problems.
In addition, Santelises said, it will be up to Dawson to advocate for the increases in state funding that allowed her to expand opportunities for students, including more art, music, sports and advanced classes.
“I do think there is going to be a question for the state,” she said. “Do we have the backbone to continue the funding that is making a difference in the quality of education for young people in Baltimore City?”
Some challenges aren’t unique to Baltimore.
Chronic absenteeism, while improving, is still not back to pre-pandemic levels across the state, where about 25% of students miss at least 18 days of school each year. In the city, it’s 46%, down from a high of 58% after the pandemic.
Attendance also isn’t back to the 90% range where it was before the pandemic, said Will McKenna, executive director of Afya Baltimore Inc., a nonprofit that runs two charter schools. “That should be a super high priority” for the next CEO, he said.
Baltimore, like every school system in the state, is working on revamping how it teaches math. The city has adopted a new curriculum and is starting to train teachers. But Santelises said more needs to be done. She’d like to see the school system get full-time coaches for math teachers, as it has done for literacy.
Santelises also said not all special needs children are getting the services they deserve. City schools have come a long way since the 1990s and early 2000s, when a judge ensconced a shadow administration at the central office to ensure his orders to improve special education were carried out. But there’s still room for improvement, according to Santelises.
Some schools have only a small percentage of students passing the state tests in reading and math, and Santelises said Dawson should give those schools more attention — particularly with regard to their climate and culture.
“We have schools that are teetering on 5% proficiency, and, you know, really toxic culture,” she said.
She said the school system sent teams to work with principals on improving instruction and provided coaching for teachers.
Some principals have had great success in turning those schools around, she said, but others have not. So the next question is “why,” she said.
One of the greatest challenges for Dawson might be taking a close look at how school choice works in the city.
Twenty years ago, “the overall quality of education in neighborhood schools was not there,” Santelises said, which led the city to give families universal choice in where their children attend middle and high school.
“And of course, it is imperfect,” she said. “Of course, the quality of choice is not where we want it to be in terms of equal across the city, but I do think that there was adjusting along the way.”
For instance, the city closed dozens of schools, and with $1 billion in state funding renovated or rebuilt more than two dozen.
But choice still has problems that can’t be ignored. Students now take buses across town on long, unpredictable and dangerous trips that often make them late to class.
City population shifts have emptied West Side schools and left schools on the East Side overflowing with students. And not all schools offer the same level of academic opportunities.
Baltimore is ready for its next iteration of school choice, Santelises said. “That day of reckoning is here now.”
The issue is complex, she said, and will require a deep dive into enrollment patterns.
“That is one area that the next CEO is probably not going to be able to put off. ... And I’m glad I don’t have to do it.”
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