After spending five years running an after-school program at Collington Square Elementary/Middle School, Julia Di Bussolo realized something was missing.

“I got to meet so many amazing students and families and community leaders and was able to weave in a lot of the arts into that program,” she says—but it didn’t feel like enough.

She appreciated the intersectionality of arts and community and wanted to see what she could do outside of what the structured school day was allowing. So, when she saw the executive director job posting for Arts Every Day, a strategic partner to the Baltimore City school district that advances equitable access to the arts, it was everything she was looking for.

“It seemed like an opportunity to really address some of the systemic challenges that I had seen students and their families face.”

Since becoming director in August 2012, Di Bussolo has grown the organizational budget to over $1.5 million and expanded the annual program reach by providing thousands of students with arts experiences like artist residencies and performances, purchasing over $100,000 in musical instruments, kilns, and arts equipment, and organizing student exhibitions.

Arts Every Day’s goal is that “every Baltimore City student has access to a transformative arts education that prepares them to be artists, leaders, advocates, makers, and supporters of the arts,” she says.

It also supports teachers who are providing art integration, provides access to arts and cultural programming across the city, and promotes Baltimore City students as artists and creatives. There is also a youth arts council that works to make sure that the “youth voice isn’t lost in the sauce when it comes to looking at systemwide issues related to arts access.” Di Bussolo took that group to Annapolis in March to meet with lawmakers and to testify before the appropriations committee.

The work is important to her not just as an art lover but a mom, too.

“My son has grown up over the course of these years and he’s a student in Baltimore City Public Schools and has been since kindergarten. So, you know, I see my role as an outside advocate, but also as a parent in the school system.”

For Maryland school teachers, simulating an environment comparable to a normal classroom in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic has presented a need for ingenuity. Virtual learning instruction and curriculum packets are being administered, food distribution stations for students who rely on school lunches have been established, and instructors have begun teaching remotely via video software.

“Virtual learning can never take the place of in-person learning in education,” says Cheryl Bost, a Baltimore County teacher currently on leave to serve as the president of the Maryland State Education Association. “Teachers by trade like to [think] ahead and figure out what we can accomplish. With the issues coronavirus presents, they feel like they’re keeping the kids learning, but they’re not going to be able to go too far ahead.”

The pandemic has been a disruptor in all walks of life, from the business and economic sectors to the food industry and in healthcare systems. But the problems it presents for the education system are comprehensive.

“We want to make sure our students are not impacted in their learning,” says Katie Poist, a eighth grade math teacher at Lakeland Elementary/Middle School in southwest Baltimore. “We take into account what they have available to them at home as far as technology, Internet access, and parental support.”

But what might be an easily addressable conflict for one school district could be a widespread problem in another. These equity issues—already present before coronavirus—have become even more prevalent throughout the last month.

“Our kids didn’t need access to technology outside of school [before coronavirus],” Poist says. “We didn’t use a ton of tech at school, so kids were able to be successful and we could help them learn. Now, it’s a huge shift.”

Coincidentally, major education reform aiming to address these inequalities and bridge gaps in education from one region to another passed in the General Assembly last month. The issues coronavirus has wrought are what advocates for the bill dubbed the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future —which currently sits on Governor Larry Hogan’s desk awaiting signing—have been stressing. The first three years of funding for the bill took effect last year, but proponents are hoping for a long term agreement.

“There are access issues in poor urban districts compared to public districts with much greater resources,” says Kristen McQuillan, a former Baltimore City School System employee and current academic director at The New Teacher Project (TNTP), where she advises school superintendents and academic offices. “This has put that issue into the forefront and the spotlight in a way that people can’t ignore.”

McQuillan says that being able to observe where these access problems are most prevalent helps explain why it costs more to educate children in certain districts compared to others. It’s why many advocates, including Poist, feel that the Blueprint’s objectives—such as increasing teachers’ salaries and providing access to Pre-K for all 3 and 4-year olds in low-income families—are vital.

“Schools are more than just education for children—they are social development,” Poist says. “The big inhibitor being a Baltimore City teacher is striving to be equitable.”

During the pandemic, Poist has helped her students access videos that Lakeland’s school district has provided. She also pre-records 15-minute video instruction to capture the day’s big picture. In the midst of this, there is also synchronous learning, where Poist is able to check in with individual students and assist them with any questions they may have.

“It’s really constant communication,” she says. “As a school, we have to figure out how to function as a team while meeting all of our kids’ needs at home.”

Over at Pine Grove Middle School in Loch Raven, Vernon Fains is adapting to teaching art remotely, as the usual materials his students would have in the classroom aren’t at their disposal. Since art is such a visual medium, Fains says that being disconnected from his students and their usual environment has its challenges.

“It’s a little tougher for the arts, because we can’t use certain materials and we can’t get our hands dirty like we normally would,” Fains says. “I think of the arts as a way for students to come in and express themselves in ways they can’t in other content areas. I miss that interaction.”

Fains says that these limitations have forced him to reevaluate how he teaches. He had his first virtual class meeting earlier this week, where he encouraged students to go out in nature and think viscerally about what they were seeing.

Both Fains and Poist have also made a point to check in on their classes’ well being. They’ve noticed their students’ moods perk up at the opportunity to see familiar faces that remind them of their routine at school.

“I think they’re excited to see and hear from us, and we’re excited to see and hear from them,” Fains says. “That moment of talking with us and getting a little bit sense of normalcy has been missing.”

As it stands, it’s unclear as to when, or if, Maryland schools will reopen this school year. Closures are in place until at least April 24, and while this isn’t ideal, it does give educators and students the opportunity to further adapt to their surroundings as they wait for the time when it will once again be safe for everyone to be together and learn.

“We miss being in the classroom,” Fains says. “We miss our students. We just want them to know that we want them to stay well and we are here for them.”

Mayor Catherine Pugh’s most recent $100,000 children’s book contract with the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS)—a deal made in 2018—has been cancelled and she has returned the money amid a deepening ethics scandal, according to spokesmen for the mayor and the UMMS.

The most recent 2018 UMMS contract for 20,000 more copies from the mayor’s Healthy Holly children’s series had yet been fulfilled because the book’s illustrator had been ill, Pugh spokesman James Bentley told Baltimore magazine.

A member of the UMMS board since 2001 before her recent resignation, Pugh entered into five children’s book contracts with the hospital network since 2011, totaling $500,000. Those contracts were each for a purchase of 20,000 of her self-published Healthy Holly children’s books at a cost of $100,000—in which Pugh netted $20,000 in profit from each deal.

When asked if the mayor has considered returning any or all of the $400,000 from the previous four contracts—or her $80,000 in profits—Bentley said he did not know. UMMS spokesman Michael Schwartzberg declined to answer a question regarding whether there have been discussions between the UMMS board and Pugh about returning money from previous contracts.

Baltimore City state Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Democrat considered a potential mayor challenger in 2020, has called on Pugh to return the money she’s received back to medical system. Baltimore City state Del. Brooke Leirman called the debacle “appalling” in a tweet. “It just keeps getting worse . . . I can’t even decide what the worst part is,” Lierman wrote.

Tuesday, The Sun reported Pugh—through her book company, Healthy Holly LLC—has made $7,040 in state political contributions since 2015, including a $5,000 contribution to her own campaign. Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski’s campaign, which received $1,000, said they planned return the money. Baltimore City state Sen. Jill Carter, who introduced legislation making it illegal for board members to profit from contracts with the hospitals they govern, is looking to donate the money to charity.

Asked Wednesday if she would release her tax returns, or tax documents for her company, Pugh told The Sun she would not “because I did everything right.” She referred to the inquires a “witch hunt.” Pugh did not attend the weekly Board of Estimates meeting at City Hall on Wednesday, nor did she hold her usual post BOE press availability.

Anne Fullerton, spokeswoman for the Baltimore City Public School System, said BCPSS received a shipment of Pugh’s children’s books between 2011 and 2013. Documentation for that shipment hasn’t been located, however. Fullerton told Baltimore that the books had not been sought by the school system, nor were they used as part of any curriculum. She could not say how many books the school system received, but said roughly 8,700 currently sit in a school warehouse and that there were no immediate plans to distribute those books.

In the meantime, Pugh’s top communications consultant said he would not renew his contract with the mayor when it expires at the end of the month.

In an emailed statement to Baltimore, attorney Stephen Burch, chairman of the board of the University of Maryland Medical System, said he takes “very seriously the concerns raised regarding Board members that have business relationships with UMMS.”

Burch said along with accepting Pugh’s resignation, he has accepted the resignations of UMMS board members John Dillon and Robert Pevenstein. The Sun broke the story last week that nine members of UMMS board have business deals with the hospital network, which they oversee. Dillon reported his health care consulting firm received $300,000 from 2017 and 2018 contracts. Pevenstein reported that his technology firms received more than $150,000 through UMMS contracts in 2017. He reported his son made more than $100,000 from UMMS in 2018. In 2014, according to The Sun’s reporting, UMMS provided $25,000 to the Gov. Larry Hogan and Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford’s inaugural committee.

Burch also said he has requested three board members—August Chiasera, Francis X. Kelly, James Soltesz and Walter Tilley, Jr.—to take an immediate voluntary leave of absence while the UMMS board reviews their governance and transparency practices.

M&T Bank executive August Chiasera has reported $7.4 million in revenue for the bank from UMMS contracts over the past two years. Former state Sen. Francis X. Kelley’s insurance company has reported $4.4 million in revenue from UMMS revenue over the past two years.

If kids want to learn to play soccer, all they need is a ball and a place to run. Same goes for football and basketball. But hockey, with its sticks and pucks and—if they graduate from street to ice—skates and pads, is more of a challenge to learn, and that’s providing they can find a place to play.  

The Washington Capitals Street Hockey program is hoping to break down those accessibility barriers in Baltimore. This summer, at the eighth annual Baltimore Street Hockey Tournament at the Madison Square Recreation Center on Gay Street, the Caps announced plans to partner with Baltimore City Public Schools and Baltimore City Recreation and Parks to expand the sports’ reach to the city’s more than 150 public schools and 42 community centers. 

Through their donation of street hockey equipment, as well as supplying a curriculum and a day of teacher training this past August, Capitals Street Hockey will provide access to the sport for all ages in the BCPS system. Sticks, balls, and goals arrived at the schools and community centers at the end of November, and the program will kick off in schools this winter.  

“As soon as I get the equipment, I’m going to start my hockey unit,” says Kyle Hughes, who has taught physical education at Thomas Johnson Elementary/Middle School for the past seven years. “I can’t wait. A lot of my students haven’t even been introduced to hockey. I’m going to have some who have never picked up a hockey stick before.” 

While the partnership with BCPS will add a fun new element to gym class, the long-term goal for the initiative is to grow the sport in Maryland and connect with the team’s Baltimore fan base. The Caps partnered with D.C. Public Schools, in 2016, and, since then, the program has grown to include field trips where students can play full street hockey games or learn to skate at local rinks. Peter Robinson, the Capitals’ director of community relations, says they hope to replicate their success in Baltimore.  

“If [students] take a liking to hockey and they’re interested in it and they want to go to the next level,” says Robinson, “then we can work with the school system or the students to get them connected with their local ice rink.”  The idea is to build upon students’ hockey skills from year to year so that, down the line, the only true beginners are the kids who are new to school.

And who knows? On some distant NHL draft day, we might see a kid from Baltimore who learned to hold a stick in gym class don a cap and sweater.

Although our city’s slogan is no longer “The City That Reads,” a new literacy program is using one powerful story to bring local communities together.

One Book Baltimore—a collaboration between Baltimore City Public Schools, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore Ceasefire, and several other organizations—connects area students through a book club-style reading of author Nic Stone’s best-selling novel, Dear Martin. Stone kicked off the initiative during the Baltimore Book Festival in September with a discussion about her debut book, which follows the story of an Ivy League-bound, African-American student who becomes a victim of racial profiling.

The program started with the distribution of free copies of the novel to all Baltimore City Public Schools seventh- and eighth-graders and continued with free events such as youth conferences on social justice. Going forward, One Book Baltimore leaders hope that the story’s narrative surrounding race and identity will encourage young people to discuss their own experiences and challenges.

Tarnerra Davis, a junior at Carver Vocational-Technical High School, says she recognized parallels between some of the plot points in Dear Martin and the violence occurring in her own neighborhood.

Davis says the book empowered her to participate in a community discussion during one Baltimore Ceasefire weekend. “I’m into speaking out on certain things that are going on in the community if someone else isn’t going to,” she says.

To wrap up the program’s inaugural year, Stone will visit the Enoch Pratt Northwood library branch on December 12 for a discussion on the book’s racial equity and anti-violence themes.

“People don’t expect [teenagers] to speak up and be knowledgeable about these topics,” says Jaylin Jones, an eighth-grader at Southwest Baltimore Charter School. “Learning about it forwards us into being leaders on these topics and enables us to help other people understand them.”

Last year, Baltimore City Public Schools teacher Tuere Ganges took to GoFundMe to purchase copies of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God as gifts to her high school students. The money donated through the website also allowed her to buy packs of multi-colored highlighters, composition notebooks, and extra paper. Ganges hand-wrapped each package and wrote a personal note for all of her students.

“Not everyone cherishes a real hard copy of a book in their hands,” Ganges said. She explained that not all schools in the district have libraries, and often students aren’t allowed to bring books home in case they lose them. The opportunity to have a book to call your own is “something powerful for them, and it was something I wanted to be able to provide.”

Ganges is one of many teachers throughout the city who are fundraising, and oftentimes spending their own money, to make sure that their classrooms are equipped with necessary supplies. Even private and charter school teachers often fork up their own cash to provide the necessary materials to their students, although to a lesser extent. In fact, a 2015 study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that, on average, 94 percent of teachers spent money out of their own pockets on classroom supplies.

No matter what district the school is in, when students come into class missing basic supplies, the responsibility falls on the instructor.

“We do have some students that come to class with everything they need, and then we have a lot of students who don’t,” Ganges said. “And if not, we try to have something available to them.”

Other instructors like Catrina Sally Thomas, who works in special education in Baltimore City, have employed similar tactics to provide materials to her students.

“Even if you have a little bit of supplies, you always have to dig into your own pocket to get what you need,” she said. In the past, Thomas has used the site DonorsChoose to get supplies and classroom decor. The site allows teachers to request money to buy materials for their classroom and links them with donors willing to contribute.

“It’s basically begging for money and supplies,” says Thomas. “But it works because people like to give.”

In addition to online crowdfunding, about a quarter of teachers nationwide are taking on second jobs to provide supplies, and also supplement their own income.

“It’s almost like you have to,” said Ganges, who has taught summer school and proctored SAT tests to make extra money. Thomas is no exception to this this trend, either. In addition to teaching, she has also worked at an Ann Taylor department store for the last decade.

Baltimore Teachers Union president Marietta English also took on several side jobs in order to make ends meet: “I worked in the mall, I worked as a security guard, and I tutored,” she said.

English explains that BCPS allocates funds for each of its schools through a system called Fair Student Funding, which was introduced in 2008. The system aims to increase resources by allowing principals to indicate exactly what their schools need. Although it grants more personalization to each school, when it comes to supplies, smaller schools are often at a disadvantage because buying in bulk is cheaper.

Funding for schools is also dependent on enrollment and academic performance. Last year, the city closed six schools that were considered either low performing or under utilized.

“It’s a business,” Ganges said. “The amount of funding you get depends on how many students you have in your building. The school I was at previously didn’t have a lot of students and, at the end of the day, they decided to close us down.”

Ganges says that the announcement of the school closure significantly changed the atmosphere, and had an impact on her students’ everyday learning.

“It’s sad because the kids become numbers, but they’re not,” she said. “They feel broken-hearted when they’re moved out of a school.”

In the last fiscal year, the Baltimore City School System projected a budget gap of more than $100 million. According to explanations in the 2018-2019 operating budget “funding levels remain below what the state has identified as needed for ensuring an adequate education for Baltimore’s young people.”

However, legislation passed by the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore—along with budget cuts to district offices and schools—has the city school system projecting financial stability in 2019. City school executives wrote: “Instead of identifying places to cut, school and district leaders were able to focus on how best to allocate available resources to promote success for all students.”

Despite the fluctuating budget, Baltimore City teachers remain passionate about providing a brighter future for their students.

“It’s something you do because you absolutely love it,” English said. “You don’t do it for the money, because the money is just not there.”

Anyone with siblings knows that besting a brother or sister in sports or winning your parents praise is like a nagging intuition that only grows with age. Thiru and Krishanti Vignarajah are living proof that sibling rivalries never die. One is running for Baltimore state’s attorney and the other is vying to unseat Gov. Larry Hogan. As the children of two immigrant Baltimore City Public School teachers, Thiru and Krishanti are the epitome of the American dream.

After their parents fled civil unrest in Sri Lanka, they sought refuge in the Edmondson Heights neighborhood in Baltimore City. Thiru went on to pursue law at Harvard—becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review “before Barack Obama made it cool.” And his younger sister, Krishanti, studied political science and molecular cellular and developmental biology at Yale, eventually becoming the policy director for Michelle Obama at the White House. Although wildly successful, the pair says that there was never any pressure from their parents to go to college and do well.

“If you ask my father, he would tell you, they didn’t really know of the Ivy League, and they always kind of encouraged us to realize our potential,” Krishanti said. “But it was never sort of pressure. It was never, ‘You will go to a top notch academic institution.’ I think there was an expectation that we would make something of ourselves and find some way to give back.” 

Neither Krishanti nor Thiru had ever thought about running for public office. For Thiru, it was the Uprising in 2015 following the death of Freddie Gray that piqued his interest in politics. As a former Maryland deputy attorney general, he witnessed firsthand how the increased violence and homicide rates in Baltimore were tearing communities apart.

“It was just gut wrenching and heart breaking,” Thiru said. “I suddenly realized that it was not going to get better unless we had real leadership in the role of the state’s attorney. I just couldn’t sit back and watch anymore.”

For Krishanti, she was asked to run following a keynote address at the Western Maryland Democratic Summit in April 2017 (and was eight months pregnant at the time). A political consultant approached her and said, “You’re not going to like me in five minutes. You’re going to hate me in five months,” and showed Krishanti a crumpled piece of paper with names on it.

“She says, ‘None of these candidates could beat governor Hogan. Fortunately, I’ve just found my candidate. I just need to wait until she delivers her baby,’” she recalls. “It kind of gave me pause. Part of that pause was that, coming out of the Obama administration, and having so many of the accomplishments we worked so hard to achieve either already reversed or threatened to be reversed, made me believe that we needed to be part of the resistance and opposition. Part of it was I was nearly nine months pregnant.”

Now, nearly six weeks away from the primaries, the brother and sister are ready to acknowledge their familial ties within the race. After keeping their relationship out of the race in an effort to “keep the focus on the issues at hand,” Thiru freely prattled on about his admiration for his little sister and all of her accomplishments.

“She’s extraordinary and we have a sibling rivalry like everybody else but there’s no one I would trust more with the biggest responsibilities on the Earth,” he said. “She is as humble as she is brilliant, she is as hardworking as she is charming.”

Neither sibling can ignore the elephant in the room—if they both win their respective seats, will there be a conflict of interest? Baltimore is known for its history of political families—Mitchells, Cardins, Mosbys—but aside from having a longer name, Thiru believes that they are the same as other families that have served. 

“If a brother and sister didn’t disagree, nobody would believe it,” he joked. “There will be issues and subjects in which we may disagree, and we’ll talk about it and we’ll move forward. In some respects, that’s what I would say about a person in government that wasn’t family.”

When the fancy titles are stripped away, and politics are out of the picture, Thiru and Krishanti are just Woodlawn High graduates who enjoy being on the water or taking in a game at Camden Yards. At the end of the day, they are just a brother and sister, who are hoping for the best outcomes for each other in the June 26 primary.

“I’m inspired and proud of what Krish is doing,” Thiru said. “There is a moment that is seizing the country and I think both of us feel this calling. It’s rooted in our unique experiences, we have walked our distinctive paths, but if not now, when? If not here, where? If not us, who?”

Wednesday morning began fairly routine for English teacher LaQuisha Hall at Carver Vocational Technology High School. She was prepping her class with warm up writing exercises when Baltimore City Public School (BCPSS) CEO Sonja Santelises walked in with a camera crew and flowers to announce that she had been selected as the 2018 Teacher of the Year.

“I did receive notice that Wednesday was the day of the announcement, but you never know when or if it’s you,” Hall said. “I was on edge most of that morning just wondering. When I saw them come through the door, I got my answer.”

The 15-year teaching veteran has been with BCPSS for her entire career and at Carver since 2015. For the past two years, Hall assisted some of her English students with publishing two books relating to social justice—A City Unspoken: A Dose of Our Reality and One Nation, One Heart. 

More than a decade ago, Hall created a mentoring and etiquette academy for young girls to help build self-confidence and give back to their communities. Queendom T.E.A. has served more than 1,000 young women since beginning in 2008.

“As much as I want them to gain academic skills, it’s also important to see them develop socially and emotionally to be great people,” she said. “So, it’s important for me to empower them in that way so they can also be empowered in the classroom to learn.”

Hall says that she is honored to be recognized by the school district for her work and is grateful to be surrounded by students who are ready to learn and administrators who support her efforts. She is now in the running to be awarded Maryland’s teacher of the year in the statewide competition, which brings back memories of her days in the pageant circuit. 

“I’m not foreign to competition, I am a former pageant queen many times over and we often went through this similar process,” she said. “The difference is the people I’ll be surrounded by. They are all great educators and motivators and it makes me feel good to be among people like that.”

To celebrate her award, Hall opted to pass on the celebratory champagne toast and instead created a Facebook page so that she could create a space for those who wanted to discuss education with her.  Also, as part of the award, she will receive a cash prize and classroom supplies provided from the Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke Endowment Fund at the Fund for Educational Excellence. She will also throw out the first pitch at the Orioles game on May 10. She says she is grateful for the love she gets from her students and hopes that she leaves a lasting impression on their lives after they move on from her class.

“One of the things that I say a lot is that they can’t let their crown tilt,” she said. “I want them to be reminded that the ground that they walk on should be gold and not concrete—they should be walking at a higher place. Maybe people don’t expect them to be there, but that is their divine placement.”

“What’s the day been like for you guys today?” Aaron Maybin asked the kids in his class at Henson Elementary School in West Baltimore.

“Cold!” more than a few replied with uninhibited childhood screams.

“Very, very, very, very cold,” said one in particular.

Maybin, a former defensive lineman for the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets and the No. 11 overall NFL draft pick out of Penn State in 2009, is now a teacher in his hometown of Baltimore. Since his four-year professional football career ended, he’s lived and worked here, pursuing art and activism.

He has a pseudo-celebrity platform with more than 24,000 Twitter and 22,000 Instagram followers, for example, and a new book out. So when Maybin posted a series of social media messages and a video from his classroom on Wednesday, himself wearing a jacket and his kindergarten and pre-K students proclaiming their frigid feelings, it shined a powerful (and eventually viral) spotlight on the hot-button issue of widespread decrepit city school infrastructure that’s come to the fore as fast as the arrival of the cold temperatures that have drafted through windows, filled decades-old buildings and busted outdated boilers and pipes over the last two weeks.

As many as 60 schools, just on Wednesday, reported problems related to facilities being unable to handle the weather, according to school system CEO Sonja Santelises (whom Baltimore profiled last year). The city teachers union urged her to shut down all schools until the problem is fixed.

Several closed because of lack of heat on Tuesday – the first day back from winter break – and Wednesday, and others dismissed kids early. All schools were closed Thursday as it snowed and again on Friday, as workers addressed some of the problems but expected more to come “particularly broken pipes and water mains,” amid more frigid temperatures, the district said.

Maybin, who attended Mount Hebron High in Howard County and whose father was a Baltimore City fire inspector, taught his lesson, heard well beyond the city, in 40-degree temperatures.   

Outlets like CNN, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo, SB Nation and New York Daily News published stories on the issue on Thursday.

“I got two classes in one room, kids are freezing, lights are off,” Maybin said. “No computers. We’re doing our best but our kids don’t deserve this.”

On social media, Maybin promoted a GoFundMe fundraiser started by Coppin State senior Samierra Jones that, as of Friday morning, had generated more than $40,000, well over the $20,000 she estimated that would be needed to buy roughly 600 space heaters for city schools and jackets for kids to keep them warm.

That, of course, is a temporary solution. Maybin’s overarching message is, “We are failing our kids,” as city and state officials debate responsibility for the root cause.

It’s a steamy Friday in July and Sonja Santelises is sitting in a stuffy conference room on the fourth floor of Baltimore City Public Schools’ district headquarters, reflecting on her first year as city schools CEO. There’s a lot to reflect on. 

Since taking over from Gregory Thornton in July 2016, Santelises has faced a dizzying array of obstacles and crises. From Thornton—who was forced out by the school board less than two years into a four-year contract—Santelises inherited stalled negotiations with the Baltimore Teachers Union and an ongoing lawsuit in which 16 charter schools are suing the school system over claims of insufficient funding. 

Also inherited from previous administrations is the 21st Century Schools Building Project, a $1 billion initiative to renovate or replace decrepit city school buildings. Then there are the perennial struggles: stemming declining enrollment, improving test scores and graduation rates, attracting and retaining high-caliber professional talent.

On top of all that, Santelises encountered some specific challenges: Last December, news broke that the school system was facing a $130 million budget gap for this fiscal year, a shortfall that would likely necessitate cutting about 1,000 positions, combining classes, and eliminating programs like art and music. In the end, lawmakers, parents, educators, and activists rallied, eventually extracting an extra $60 million in state funding to help close the deficit. Layoffs still resulted—115 positions in total, including 13 classroom teachers—but disaster was avoided. 

So how does she evaluate her eventful first year in charge of the district that educates 82,000 kids, employs 11,000 people, and commands an annual budget of roughly $1.3 billion?

Santelises hoots at the question with the knowingness of a prisoner who has just escaped the guillotine and begins a long answer that grows in certainty and righteousness as she continues. 

“I mean, there are always some regrets . . . personnel-based ones here or there, but overall, to be sitting here and not have combined first-, second-, and third-grade classes throughout the district because we had to cut 1,000 teachers? I’m okay with that.”

She yawns—due to the stuffy air, she says—but rhetorically, she’s ramping up. 

“I mean, yes, do I regret that we’re not funded at the level that outside experts, commissioned by the state, have said that we should be funded? Sure. But I am also thrilled that we had a community that mobilized on behalf of its children. . . . We had advocates, we had parents, we had young people, we had principals and teachers who all poured out and said, ‘Our kids are worth it, and you might not give it to us, but we will be heard.’ And I think people were surprised. [People initially thought,] ‘Well, it’s just Baltimore.’”

Nothing frustrates Santelises more than hearing the district and its students maligned. In fact, it was hearing such talk during the unrest following Freddie Gray’s death that motivated her to pursue the CEO position. At the time, Santelises—a married mother of three—was working a cushy job at The Education Trust, a prestigious Washington, D.C., think tank, where she enjoyed a healthy work-life balance and the freedom to research issues deeply and advocate for educational equity without politics and public bureaucracy. 

But watching students from Frederick Douglass High School clash with police at Mondawmin Mall that April afternoon—and listening to subsequent characterizations of those students as hopeless delinquents—“incensed” her.

From 2010 to 2013, she had been chief academic officer for Baltimore City Public Schools, so she knew a different side of the school system and its students, one that bore little resemblance to the caricatures being perpetuated on cable news.   

“At least at the time that I was here as CAO, Douglass was really on the rise,” she says. “Like, I had been in Douglass. I had been in an AP English class. I had seen the cheerleaders getting ready for the football game and the band practice. I just had this thing about proving people wrong, and I felt like our kids were just being blanketed as something that they are not.”  

Almost exactly a year after the clash at Mondawmin, she accepted the CEO position, and then began her new role on July 1, 2016. 

With degrees from Brown, Columbia, and Harvard, and more than 25 years of professional experience as an educator and administrator in urban school systems under her belt, it is a position for which she is eminently qualified. Her best asset, though, may be her “nothing-to-lose” attitude. 

“I told a group of funders when I came back—they were pushing on something—and I said, ‘Let me be real clear: I am not back here because I need a job. . .  . I am back here because of the kids and families of Baltimore.’” 

Growing up in Massachusetts, just north of Boston, Santelises was drawn to education early. 

“If you hear my mom tell the story, I always loved chalkboards and writing. I loved playing school,” she says.

Her father, Jackson Brookins, a chemist-turned-industrial-relations-executive for Eastman Kodak, was supportive of the idea. Her mother, Verna, a former social worker who headed up community relations for Polaroid, was not. 

“For [educated] black women from her generation in the South there were two [options],” Santelises explains. “More than likely, you became a pastor’s wife . . . or you became a teacher. So in my mother’s mind, she wanted something else for me.”

While her mother may have initially discouraged education as a profession, both her parents worked to create a culture of learning for Santelises and her younger sister, Shahara, now a college professor. Santelises’ father, whom she has described as “her intellectual anchor,” was the ringmaster of the dinner table, instigating intense debates on current events. From her mother, who was a district minister in the Pentecostal church, Santelises inherited what she calls “the speech oratory piece” of her personality. 

Though her family was Protestant, Santelises attended Catholic high school, an experience for which she is now grateful. She says her school’s focus on faith and service fit her personality. Furthermore, the school—in its own way—promoted what educators now call “equalizing educational opportunities” and “growth mindset.” (In layman’s terms, an “equalizing” environment is one in which every child—regardless of socio-economic status—is believed to have great potential; “growth mindset” is a philosophy that states that hard work and discipline are skills that can be developed.)

“I remember Sister Mary Louise reaming somebody out who had, like, close to perfect SAT scores,” Santelises says. “She was saying, ‘I don’t care what your SAT scores are, because if you can’t get your work done on time and it’s not done well, nobody cares what your doggone SAT score is!’ 

“So there was really a work ethic,” she continues. “It was the assumption that you work to get smart. And for an African-American girl in a predominately white school, it actually was a big deal. . . . There was really this sense of, ‘You want to come in here and do the work? Go into any [level] class you want to.’”

After high school, Santelises headed off to Brown University, where she double majored in English and international relations. What she was going to do after graduation, though, remained a question. She toyed with the idea of applying for some kind of government post in West Africa, or maybe going back to grad school for international relations. But a stint substitute teaching in her hometown sealed the deal. She loved teaching. It was as simple as that, and her mother would just have to understand. (“She’s long since been okay with it,” Santelises notes.) 

Soon after this realization, Santelises met with a young go-getter named Wendy Kopp at the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square. Kopp was hatching an idea for a corps of teachers who would be deployed to some of the most disadvantaged districts in the nation. Santelises signed on and moved to New York City to help recruit and place promising candidates for what became Teach for America. From there she became a teacher and curriculum specialist at an elementary school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, eventually helping to found its affiliated middle school. After that, she took a job with the New York City chapter of the Algebra Project, a nonprofit that works to increase math skills in low-income students. 

Also while in New York, Santelises met her husband, Luis, an entrepreneur and businessman. The couple moved back to Boston, where Santelises enrolled in the selective Urban Superintendents Program at Harvard University. Though she loved the program, she still wasn’t sure she wanted to commit to a career as a district administrator. 

“I was like, ‘Central office? Who the heck would want to go work in a central office?’” she says, mock indignantly. “Like, that is the most unimportant, unrelated work. [The important work] is here, it’s in the schools.”

Gradually, though, she came to see the possibilities, joining Boston Public Schools as assistant superintendent for professional development, then interim deputy superintendent, and finally assistant superintendent for pilot schools, a roll that saw her supervising 23 pilot schools in the district.

Then in 2010, Andrés Alonso, a former Harvard classmate, reached out. He was three years into his tenure as schools CEO in Baltimore and he needed a new chief academic officer. He had offered—and Santelises had declined—the same position in 2008, but he sensed that, this time, she was ready.

“I had enormous respect for her always, and now she had had a set of experiences in a district that was doing some interesting things. I thought that she had probably gotten stronger over time,” says Alonso.

But there were other candidates in the mix, so Alonso arranged for he and a team of trusted Baltimore colleagues to travel to New Jersey for a day of secret interviews with the finalists. 

“I did not signal to the team that I had a preference because they were all strong,” recalls Alonso. “What was so funny was after her interview, during the small debriefing, a couple of people sort of turned and said, ‘Do you really think we can convince her to come to Baltimore?’”

So in 2010, Sonja Santelises and her family—which by then included her eldest daughter, Katriel, and fraternal twin girls, Francesca and Talia—relocated to Baltimore, settling in Roland Park. 

She got to work right away, assembling her own team of deputies who helped her identify and expand upon “pockets of excellence” and standardize teaching practices. 

“One of the things I was most proud of as CAO was we developed a rubric for ‘This is what good teaching looks like in Baltimore City,’” she says. “It’s not idiosyncratic. It’s not what you feel. There is a craft. Yes, you absolutely adapt situationally, but you don’t just rip up everything we know just because somebody feels like they might want to do it a little differently.”

She also identified what she terms “content-anemic” elementary curricula. “Second graders can learn about the Aztecs. You don’t have to give them generalized stories about pets all day,” she insists.  

This is the work Santelises hopes to continue now that she has returned. In July, she unveiled the district’s “Blueprint,” a strategic plan outlining the school system’s priorities, which include literacy and student wholeness—i.e. providing an environment that nurtures a student’s mental, physical, emotional, and academic needs.

“We’ve got to be able to do both,” she insists. “You can create a nurturing environment that’s validating . . . but without setting a standard? That, for me, is professional malpractice.”

She is also realistic about the fact that—for now, at least—she will have to do this with fewer resources than she would like. Without naming names, she questions the wisdom of the special tax increment financing deals the city has approved for mega developments (like Harbor Point and Port Covington) because—among other reasons—they initially add population without collecting commensurate taxes. But she is undeterred. 

She happened to be reading a biography of Mary McLeod Bethune, the pioneering African-American educator, during the budget crisis, and says it “grounded” her, reminding her that there are people who have had to do more with even less. 

“Black churches have opened basements, people have taught kids to read in swamps when it was illegal. Like, we will educate people,” she says. 

“I come from a long line of African-American educators—and the same is true in the Latino community and the same is true in low-income communities in West Virginia—there are always people who are going to care about the education of the most vulnerable.”

Wednesday was a big day in Clifton-Berea, a disadvantaged neighborhood in East Baltimore that usually doesn’t receive a lot of attention unless there’s a tragedy, like the six homicides the neighborhood has experienced already this year. 

But this week’s commotion was of a celebratory sort, as residents, educators, and public officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the neighborhood’s new Fort Worthington Elementary/Middle School. 

The school is the first building completed as part of Baltimore City Public Schools’ (BCPSS) ambitious 21st Century School Buildings Program. The program—a partnership between BCPSS, the Maryland Stadium Authority, the city, and the state—dedicates $1.1 billion toward the renovation or reconstruction of at least 23 city school buildings within the next decade. Funded in part by Baltimore City’s 5 cent bottle tax, the initiative aims to modernize learning facilities throughout the city, many of which suffer from unreliable heating and cooling systems, antiquated amenities, and even unsafe drinking water. The new Fort Worthington, which can accommodate up to 700 students in grades K through 8, was completed on time and on budget at a cost of $37 million.

The new school’s opening heralds a victory for public education advocates who lobbied for the 21st Century School Buildings Project and its atypical funding model. Normally, school districts use capital improvement funds to pay for construction and renovation on a per-project basis. But BCPSS’s capital improvement funding is so anemic—and its need is so great—that an alternative financing model was sought.   

“If we had had to wait for [capital improvement funding] money to get new schools, we’d be getting, like, one school every two years,” explained Sonja Santelises, the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, who we profile in our September issue. 

The 21st Century School Buildings Program’s $1.1 billion in funding allowed BCPSS to launch several projects at once, and now those projects are coming to fruition. One other school, Frederick Elementary, located in Southwest Baltimore, will open this month. Two others—John Eager Howard Elementary School and Lyndhurst Elementary/Middle School—are slated to open in January 2018. And more schools around the city are in various stages of construction. Information about the 21st Century School Buildings Project, including status reports on the other schools, is available at the 21st Century Schools website.   

On Wednesday, community members oohed and ahhed as they streamed into the gleaming new facility filled with natural light, vibrantly colored furniture, and tech-equipped classrooms. 

RaShawn Stanley, a rising seventh grader at Fort Worthington who spoke at the ribbon cutting ceremony, says she loves the new school and thinks that it will provide an improved learning environment. “It’s hard to learn when your school is broken down and you have so many distractions around you. So this will be better,” she said.

In addition to new classrooms, there’s an art room, band and music rooms, a guidance center, a media center with an attached video production studio, and a technology lab. The 102,000-square-foot school also houses spaces that can be used by the community, including a health suite and indoor and outdoor recreation and play areas. 

“Take a moment to look at where we are,” said Cheryl A. Casciani, the chair of the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners. “You are in a Baltimore City public school and it is beautiful. And that is what our children deserve.”

Santelises agreed, telling the crowd in the school’s new blue-and-white gymnasium that the project “says we are not educating [students] for a past. We are educating [them] for a future that many of us adults will never see.” 

With that in mind, scroll through the slideshow below to see images of the brand spanking new Fort Worthington Elementary/Middle School.   

Back-to-school season usually begins in July with children pouting and parents dancing down the aisles of Target as they load up carts with supplies to send the children back to school at the end of August.

But this year, in Maryland, the shopping has commenced a little later and children are in camp a little longer because of an executive order issued in October 2016 by Governor Larry Hogan stating that the 24 public school districts in Maryland cannot begin before Labor Day.

“The Labor Day holiday weekend is an exclusively American institution that has served, both symbolically and practically, as our nation’s traditional end of summer,” he wrote in the executive order. “The policy of constructing the public school (kindergarten through 12th grade) calendars so that classes begin prior to the Labor Day holiday has imperiled this venerable tradition.”

Some local residents are having mixed feelings about the switch, like Jen Hauser, mother of two students at Rodgers Forge Elementary School. She said she loves the idea that her kids can “just be kids” a little while longer, but also understands the inconvenience it causes other parents.

“The constant running from one place to another will consume their lives when they are adults. For now, I love to see the creativity that comes from unscheduled routine,” she said. “But I do realize that for working parents, it’s another week to obtain daycare. I wish this was an equally affordable option for everyone.”

Governor Hogan believes that the post-Labor Day start will be good for businesses and families, but this order counters the trend in other parts of the country that start school earlier in an effort to bridge the socioeconomic gap and limit the amount of time working families have to pay for child care.

Prior to the executive order, a task force including teachers, administrators, and business leaders, was created by the Maryland General Assembly to examine the administrative and economic implications of a later start. Results identified only economic benefits—an additional $74.3 million in direct activity—and found no academic consequences, so the group voted to approve the new date.

Denise Mitchell, administrative secretary at Highlandtown Elementary/Middle School, believes that August is the best time to go back to school because children lose so much information over the summer. 

“Starting school after Labor Day is only for financial gain,” she said. “Society is complaining about not having enough vacation time or making enough money because of the early start date. Educating our children during their formative years should be the first priority for every adult. Our children need to be able to function in this ever-changing world.” 

For some, the start date isn’t the problem. Under Hogan’s new order, schools must complete the required 180 days of instruction by June 15. President of the Baltimore Teachers Union, Marietta English, said the hard end date complicates things.

“We already have two snow days built into the curriculum, but we can’t predict the weather,” she says. “Winter break and spring break are contractually set, so our professional development days will be impacted in order to end school on time.”

In an effort to resolve any calendar conflicts that may arise, Hogan has included an option for school districts to apply for an annual waiver that would permit a school to begin before Labor Day or end later than June 15. In order to obtain the waiver, the local board of education must apply to the state board citing “compelling justifications” for the exemption.

Such reasons could include charter schools with innovative schedules, low-performing or at-risk schools, and districts with 10 emergency or weather-related closings twice in the past five years. The school board must then hold at least one public meeting to consider the waiver and have it approved.

However, no school in the state has been granted the waiver this year and all Maryland public schools will be back in session on September 5.

“I am optimistic,” English said. “I think this will be a good school year, no matter when we start and stop.”