Baltimore Police Capt. Gerard Busnuk has a vision for Walbrook High School.
His dream features attentive, neatly dressed students tapping on laptop computers, learning the discipline and skills that will propel them into good colleges and solid jobs.
It's more than a fantasy for Busnuk, one of the architects of a proposal that would dramatically change student life at Walbrook, one of the lower-performing schools in the city. Under the plan, Walbrook would be divided into four academies -- business; police; fire and emergency services; and maritime.
Under the proposal, the number of students at Walbrook -- about 1,350 -- would not change.
"This is an approach needed because a lot of the time, children who are poor performers don't have the support or the discipline at home or in the neighborhoods they need," Busnuk said. "This will provide some."
On Tuesday, the proposal was approved by a committee considering a new schools program, which encourages nonprofit groups to suggest strategies to manage the city's more troubled schools. School officials must make the proposal acceptable to parents, teachers and students who have opposed similar moves at Walbrook. The school board must approve the plan in the next several weeks for the changes to be in place by September.
This isn't the first time an outside group has tried to take control of Walbrook.
An effort to transform Walbrook into a maritime academy was dropped this month after angry parents, teachers and students complained that the plan would force out Walbrook students who didn't want to join.
The new proposal should ease those concerns, Busnuk said.
"The students currently at Walbrook can stay if they wish and get a Walbrook diploma, although we hope many or some of them will go into one of the academies," he said, noting that if the plan is approved for the coming school year, all ninth-graders would have to sign up for one of the academies.
Busnuk said some community residents might try to block the effort, fearing they would lose their neighborhood school in exchange for an academy that selects students from across the city.
Noting that neighborhood residents would be given priority in admissions, Busnuk said: "I think the response to 'We're going to lose our neighborhood school' is 'Maybe you'll get something better.' "
