Baltimore school administrators unveiled a plan yesterday to reduce violence and the dropout rate by overhauling alternative education, nearly doubling the number of alternative school slots by August and creating morning and evening programs for working students.
The plan calls for the creation of two new alternative schools and the redesign of existing alternative schools, where most staff members will reapply for their jobs. The school system has already set aside $15 million in its budget to fund the plan for the first year.
Alternative schools serve students with behavioral and academic problems. City schools chief Andres Alonso, who is completing his first year on the job, has said for months that reforming these schools is among his top priorities and a key component in stemming school violence. In recent weeks, a 13-year-old boy was charged with trying to rape a staff member at his middle school, and a video of a high school teacher being beaten during class was widely publicized on television and the Internet.
The city has room in its alternative schools for 1,450 students, not nearly enough to meet the demand. Alonso is planning the immediate creation of an additional 1,200 slots, for a total of 2,650.
Administrators presented the plan last night to get feedback from the school board and the public. They are striving to relieve a burden on teachers and administrators by removing - at least temporarily - some of the most disruptive students from regular schools. The goal is to eventually send many of those students back to their schools with improved social and academic skills.
Currently, students who are suspended are sent home with homework packets, a punishment that Alonso says is meaningless. Routinely, they are sent back to their home schools because the system does not have enough space in its alternative schools to serve them. Teachers complain that the system is sending the message that students can behave badly without consequences.
On any given day, about 270 students in Baltimore are on long-term suspension or expulsion, many at home.
"We want them back, and we want them supervised," said Jonathan Brice, the system's executive director of student support services, who presented the plan last night.
Overage students
The plan will heavily target the thousands of city students who have had to repeat one or more grades and are older than their classmates. Overage students are far more likely than their peers to be suspended and to drop out, and Alonso says it is critical to have quality alternative schools to meet their needs.
