Same Players, Same Result: Baltimore City Schools Enrollment Task Force

“You — parents, family and community members — are essential to the education of our children; we need to treat you like real partners…[W]e will engage organizations that are trusted in the community to help you stay connected to your children’s school.” – Former Baltimore City Schools CEO, Dr. Andres Alonso, in his first communication, March 6, 2008

On November 21, 2017, Baltimore City School Board Liaison Joseph Straaik and Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff J.D. Merrill made a presentation to the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners Operations Committee on enrollment. Included in that presentation was notice that an Enrollment Task Force (ETF) would be forming to “recommend strategies to sustain and grow enrollment by engaging stakeholders and drawing on their expertise.” The ETF would include three workgroups: (1) public relations/marketing; (2) enrollment strategies; and (3) customer service. Neither the Board nor the current CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools made any further public mention of the ETF.

As an active and engaged parent, I inquired as to the selection process and composition of the ETF in April 2018. I was told that the ETF was “internal” and that its findings would likely be released in June 2018. The Board Liaison did share a list of the 22 individuals chosen to sit on the ETF and that “[i]nitial members were suggested by the CEO, Board Chair, and members of the Mayor’s team.” Despite the assertion that the work was internal, members of the ETF were scheduled to present their findings to the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (ABAG) — though only for dues-paying members — on April 24, 2018. Upon learning of the scheduled presentation to ABAG, I filed a complaint under the Open Meetings Act.

Apart from issues of transparency governed by state statute, the ETF in its current form: (1) is not racially or socioeconomically representative of Baltimore City Public School students and (2) is duplicating past work — including work performed by paid contractors — which delays the implementation of policies and practices to ameliorate the stark disparities within and among Baltimore City Public Schools.

I. Representation and the ETF

At present, the ETF has 22 members.

There is but one parent representative. There are no organizational representatives from the Hispanic/Latinx community despite the fact that Hispanic/Latinx enrollment is the only demographic group with rising enrollment; Hispanic/Latinx enrollment now outstrips white enrollment citywide.

Declining enrollment is not uniform across demographic groups. Population loss among city school students was greater among higher income/non-Free and Reduced Meals (FARMs) students. Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance noted that the City was losing higher income students — particularly during the transition to middle school — in 2015. (City Schools no longer collects FARMs data, having moved to community eligibility.)

As there was no public process for selection of the members of the ETF, their collective and individual familiarity with demographic data and past analyses of enrollment is unknown. Additionally, it is unclear how many members are city residents with children who are (or were previously) enrolled in public school.

Although the ETF purports to be concerned with customer service, it fails to include representation from a wide cross-section of agencies that certainly influence student enrollment. For example, there are no members from transportation. This is a serious shortcoming given that nearly 40% of students citywide use the Maryland Transportation Administration (MTA) or a cab to reach school. Before any success or failure of customer service at their school, students and parents must contend with late and delayed buses from the MTA, which has a low on-time performance rate (only 60% of buses arrive on time). Enrollment decisions do not begin and end at the school door.

All too often, the School Board engages in efforts, including contracting for services, well before it engages parents who are the ultimate arbiters of whether to enroll their child. Rather than engage parents from the first, we are invited to comment on reports or findings only at a second or third stage of development. Parents must be engaged as partners from inception, not when the school system decides it is most convenient. Asking parents to choose from a narrow, predetermined range of options already vetted by leadership is not engagement or partnership.

II. Delaying Change. Again.

Most alarming is that Baltimore City Public Schools is convening yet another task force or workgroup to address a longstanding problem (for a relatively brief historical discussion of declining enrollment amid integration and “white flight,” see Edward Berkowitz’s 1997 article Baltimore’s Public Schools in a Time of Transition which contains the following. The past is never dead, indeed.

The ETF is centered on marketing and customer service despite evidence that far more substantive reforms are long overdue.

In 2015, Baltimore City Public Schools released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a rezoning feasibility analysis. The contract was awarded to DeJong Richter (now Cooperative Strategies) on September 8, 2015 for $248,700 with work due one year later. RFP Addendum #2 included the requirement that the contract monitor “ensure that the Comprehensive Feasibility Study reflects input from an Advisory Committee regarding neighborhood and community dynamics, as well as potential policy impacts.” That never happened. Once again, Baltimore City Public Schools decided to conduct work behind closed doors until advocates pressed for promised meetings. Community meetings were finally held between March and May 2017, well after the entire study should have been completed. No Advisory Committee was ever formed.

The work performed by DeJong Richter included extensive reporting on questions related to enrollment, programming, equity, etc. asked of stakeholders at the March-May 2017 meetings. The results of those meetings were published on June 1, 2017 well before the ETF was created and followed a May 2017 report projecting the loss of another 2,112 students over the next 10 years.

Participants in the community meetings were asked three questions regarding enrollment and their responses focused heavily on equity with comments such as:

• “Increase programming at all schools to make all of them desirable“
• “Ensure all schools are high quality so that students have an equal opportunity to reach their full potential”
• “Improve resources of neighboring under-enrolled schools”
• “No matter where you live, what your education is, how much money you make, you have access to the same services as others”

Despite these comments, the 2015 Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance report (above), and City School’s own recommendation to “[expand] high-quality middle school programming, to improve equity of access and promote City Schools as a strong middle grades option among families who may consider leaving the district after 5th grade,” these are the current locationa of all middle grades Advanced Academics, International Baccalaureate, and Ingenuity programs.

Desirable, high-quality programs with entry criteria are heavily concentrated in the northern half of the city in neighborhoods with higher per capita income. These schools attract significant out-of-zone enrollment, as do schools in the “White L,” though not exclusively.

If one looks at enrollment by building rather than citywide, one gets the sense not of an enrollment crisis but rather a system marked by incredible unevenness.

For example, school 251 in the upper left is Callaway Elementary. Over one-third of its students are out-of-zone enrollees and the building is over capacity (105–108% occupied). School 84 in the bottom center is Thomas Johnson (TJ). TJ has more than 50% of enrollees from out-of-zone and is over-enrolled at over 110%+ occupancy. Baltimore has many schools that are at or over capacity and others that are seriously under-enrolled.

Rather than a serious quantitative and qualitative analysis of factors that draw people away from their neighborhood school and to another, which would build upon the over quarter million dollars we already spent with DeJong Richter, City Schools focuses on customer service. Rather than an examination of out-of-zone enrollment policies and their impact on equity, City Schools focuses on marketing.

[As an aside, much of out-of-zone enrollment today, post NCLB, is via principal discretion. I would guess that results in uneven out-of-zone enrollment by race and socioeconomic status and accrual to schools thought of as desirable. As with charters, elementary students must have their own transportation to an out-of-zone school. This in a city where more than 50% of households in eight Community Statistical Areas do not have access to a personal vehicle. City schools does not, as far as I am aware, track out-of-zone enrollment by race or socioeconomic status though the overall percent is tracked, along with average travel distance.]

I am sure Baltimore City Public Schools will argue it can walk and chew gum; that is, it can simultaneously assemble the ETF and work on the thorny problems of zoning, equity, quality curriculum, etc. However, doing so demands that central office staff — smaller now, given several years of budget reductions — and stakeholders must request information again, and again, and again. Except that does not appear so. The Board has delayed the adoption of an equity policy — originally scheduled for adoption in May 2018 — indefinitely. Similarly, the Baltimore Community Schools Steering Committee has not met in many months despite a 2019 deadline to produce standards for the policy adopted in 2016.

Same Players, Same Results?

The Goldseker Foundation and Enterprise Foundation — both represented on the ETF — have had school enrollment initiatives. A 2004 report from Enterprise Foundation focused on their efforts with Kelson Elementary and William Pinderhughes. Sadly, a mere six years later, Kelson closed and Pinderhughes moved into its building on Gold St. Six years after that, the School Board slated Pinderhughes for closure; the school was saved only through the diligent work of community advocates and parents.

[Pinderhughes students were initially slated to attend either Gilmor or Eutaw Marshburn. There appears to be no rhyme or reason for what is closed: Pinderhughes is housed in the Kelson Building. Kelson was built in 1974 and as per the 2012 Jacobs Report its 10 year replacement cost was $9.5M. Pinderhughes’ attendance rate for elementary was 93.4% and middle was 92.8%. It had 46.2% advanced professional teachers and 14.1% of classes were not taught by highly qualified teachers. By contrast, Gilmor was built in 1962 and had a 10 year replacement cost of $16.2M and the attendance rate was 84% (and trending steeply down). Gilmor had 40% advanced qualified professional teachers and 17.6% of classes were not taught by highly qualified teachers. Eutaw Marshburn (EM) was built in 1966 and a 10 year replacement cost of $20M and the attendance rate was 95.7%. EM had 40% advanced qualified professional teachers and 7.2% of classes were not taught by highly qualified teachers. Why would the Board move to close Pinderhughes, which is newer, has lower replacement costs, more highly qualified teachers and better attendance in favor of routing kids to Gilmor? And why would you close an elementary/middle to send kids to an elementary-only when research says that K-8 helps with attendance, transition to middle school, and dropout prevention? And why would you close a community school — Pinderhughes has a community school coordinator via Humanim/Elev8 — after adopting a citywide policy in 2016 to encourage community schools in favor of sending children to a school without a community school coordinator?]

Goldseker created its Neighborhood School Partnership in 2010. Then President Timothy Armbruster said, “We intentionally started in neighborhoods where we wouldn’t have to spend 20 years trying to fix the public schools.” While starting in relatively stable neighborhoods might make managerial sense, it further exacerbates inequity by driving funding away from unenrolled schools in less desirable neighborhoods.

Why are we inviting the same nonprofits to the same table to discuss the same issue using the same words (marketing, customer service, narrative) and expecting different results? Why are we privileging this effort over the adoption of an equity policy? Where is the Task Force on that?