A parent complained to the city school system more than a year ago that Principal Marco T. Clark was permitting a 12th- grader at Maritime Industries Academy in West Baltimore to teach classes to younger students.
Clark resigned from the high school last month. The resignation came after school system officials looked into allegations that Clark permitted a student to teach junior ROTC classes and to graduate without the necessary credits. Clark's supervisor said she investigated the allegation about the classes last year but was unable to substantiate it.
During an interview yesterday, the student, 18-year-old Marcus Bernard, said he taught three classes a day for three months before the ROTC program was disbanded. He said the principal permitted him to stay home with his two young sons during the spring semester, and he returned to graduate in June. He contends that he had enough credits to graduate.
"Some of the things that he did were not correct," Bernard said of Clark, describing the principal as a father figure. "Now he's paying for it. He loves Maritime, and he loves his job. I don't believe it's correct that it should be taken from him."
William Cappe, a parent liaison for the Maryland State Department of Education, e-mailed Clark's supervisor, Sharon Kanter, on Jan. 29, outlining concerns he had heard from the mother of a Maritime student. The mother, Tonja Evans, said she contacted the state department after calls to the school system got no response.
"She states that presently, there are students in the 12th grade teaching classes," Cappe wrote in the e-mail, obtained by The Sun. "She wonders how this could [possibly] occur." The e-mail said a required technology course had no teacher and that students were being taught music instead.
As an "area academic officer," Kanter oversees several high schools, and Maritime was under her jurisdiction until recently.
Alan Silverberg, an attorney for Clark, said the school had to dismiss its regular ROTC instructor in the fall of 2006 because it did not have enough money to pay him. He said Bernard was permitted to lead drills, but a substitute or another adult was always present. And he said the allegation that the student was allowed to graduate without all the required credits is "absolutely, unequivocally false."
"The student graduated having taken all required curriculum," Silverberg said.
