Baltimore City Schools

Two of Maryland's greatest self-made men of recent years - Under Armour founder Kevin Plank and Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti - have taken the routine renewal of their companies' marketing agreement and are extending it to a combined philanthropic effort focused on Baltimore City schools and children. Both men see a healthy Baltimore as essential to the well-being of the state (and, not incidentally, their own success), and they say they want to do whatever they can to improve it. Their idea to combine "a little money, a little exposure and a little arm-twisting" to find ways of inspiring city youth and convincing others to join in their efforts has real potential.

An article in the May 4, 1912 edition of The Argus reported on the latest incident in a frightening series of fatal shootings in the area. The residents of Catonsville are alarmed over a number of valuable dogs which have been shot and killed within the last two weeks and efforts are being made to apprehend the guilty persons. Several days ago, a valuable setter dog belonging to Dr. Walter A. Low was killed with a shotgun. ***** Gudgeon fishing along the Patapsco river at Relay has caused a flurry of excitement among the anglers, and every day this week the banks of the river were lined with fisherman.

In at least one Baltimore elementary school, the staff is engaged in an all-out war on rats because the rodents have such easy access through holes in the walls. In other city schools, classrooms are literally caving in from water damage. White dust falls from the decaying ceiling tiles, and in many places, extreme temperatures caused by failing heating and ventilation systems are the norm. Yet even as so many teachers and students suffer through these disgraceful conditions - and with top city officials rightfully pleading for hundreds of millions of dollars more for school renovations - we now know the school's system's information technology chief authorized a $250,000 renovation of his department, including his own executive suite, in the city school system's North Avenue headquarters.

All Baltimore schools are now recycling, officials announced Thursday, an initiative that generated 27 tons of recycled material in its first month. Until the systemwide effort began in February, 72 schools out of Baltimore's 205 had separated paper, bottles and cans from other garbage. The announcement, held at Highlandtown Elementary/Middle School, was met with applause from students who have been working to expand recycling this year. As Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and schools CEO Andrés Alonso made the announcement, second- and third-grade students clad in green T-shirts held handmade signs on the front steps of Highlandtown.

I am very upset with what I read in your newspaper about the threat to the supplemental educational services tutoring program ("Fund classrooms, not corporations," March 27). I have a daughter who is in the free tutoring program, and no one asked me if this was a good or bad program. It has helped my daughter tremendously. Now interim state superintendent of schools Bernard J. Sadusky wants to take away the one program that Baltimore City children really need. I am outraged and appalled.

Searching for a new school superintendent in Maryland sometimes takes the skills of a CIA agent, including clandestine meetings and flights to faraway places. Three Maryland school boards are nearing the end of searches for new superintendents, and each one has included a closed process during the last several months. In other secret searches, the names of the candidates are kept confidential and interviews with the school board are often held in airports or airport hotels so that candidates can fly in and out without being seen.

With the Baltimore City Schools continually operating in the red, I find it outrageous that CEO Andrés Alonso's chauffeur managed to make $154,000 last year, $78,000 of it in overtime! First of all, if our former state schools superintendent, Nancy Grasmick, didn't have a driver, why does Mr. Alonso require one? This chauffeur has the best deal going, but let's face it, his compensation package needs to be re-negotiated. The fact that the city schools allowed this to go on and City Hall claims to not know about it shows how rampant the corruption is in these two systems.

Baltimore city schools CEO Andres Alonso has released his 2012 message to the district on testing integrity, as the school system gears up to begin administering the Maryland School Assessements to students in grades three through eight on March 12. A story on Monday outlined the district's efforts this year to continue its heightened scrutiny during the testing season, a measure Alonso began last year by hiring more than 200 external...

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and city schools chief Andrés Alonso, who have pushed separate plans to renovate Baltimore's crumbling schools, presented a united front Tuesday in Annapolis as they asked state legislators to radically alter the manner in which school construction funds are provided to the city. But the bill on which they testified — which would guarantee the state's contribution to city school construction, allowing the city to leverage bonds with the proceeds — could be in jeopardy.

Darius Riley displays the concentration of a tightrope walker as he fastens his eyes on the lined paper in front of him and grips his No. 2 yellow pencil down to its point to make his most perfect curly letters. "I would rather do it in print because it is faster," Darius, a fifth-grader at Highlandtown Elementary School near Patterson Park, said of his cursive writing. Even his typing would probably be quicker, he says. Darius may be in the last generation of students to be taught cursive as states begin dropping the subject in favor of spending time on mastering math, science and other skills.