Baltimore School

We were very pleased to read about the Baltimore City Public Schools' well-deserved national recognition as "revitalized" and on "an upward trajectory" in "Baltimore's graduation rate: a success story still being written" (March 28). As the article makes clear, the Baltimore City Public Schools, under the leadership of CEO Andrés Alonso, have gone to extraordinary lengths to improve the quality of education, increase graduation rates, reduce expulsions and suspensions and develop robust partnerships with foundations, community organizations and other stakeholders.

Norovirus was likely the culprit that sickened 200 students and nine staff members at Pot Spring Elementary in Timonium last week, Baltimore County health officials have found. About a third of the school's students were absent May 17 because of gastrointestinal symptoms, prompting a health department investigation. Preliminary lab tests performed by the county health department showed that norovirus was probably behind the symptoms, according to a letter the school's principal sent to parents this week.

When St. Frances Academy needed another $2 million to build its community center in East Baltimore, one nun turned to her "good friends and two of the very finest persons I know" — the Cosbys. Sister Mary Alice Chineworth, an Oblate Sister of Providence and one of the school's longest-serving teachers, called the couple. Camille Cosby said yes right away. Her husband, Bill, one of the country's best-known comedians, insisted repeatedly, amid much laughter at a dedication ceremony Friday, that he was not consulted.

Among the expenditures by the city school system that U.S. Department of Education auditors found inappropriate: $4,352 spent by two elementary schools for dinner cruises at Baltimore's Inner Harbor $2,413 spent on fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, biscuits, cookies and soda for 28 attendees at a PTA meeting to discuss a school's budget $1,336 spent to take 30 people to a theater performance downtown that included dinner, dancing and...

A newly renovated health center at Tench Tilghman Elementary and Middle School in Baltimore has reopened to students and will include a doctor onsite once a week The health st uite will

School never closed this summer for about 30 Baltimore City middle-school students. They arrive at Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School with enthusiasm for a day that may be shorter and more laid-back, but still enhances their academic and athletic skills. These kids are reading books of their own choosing, writing in their personal journals, zipping through math calculations and working out on the basketball court. They spend two hours a day in an air-conditioned classroom and two in the gym — cooled only with fans — at the school on West Lexington Street, a few miles from downtown.

The Baltimore School for the Arts can boast its first nomination for a Tony Award -- thanks to graduate Shalita Grant, whose debut Broadway bow has won her a nod for Best Featured Actress in a Play. "Graduates have been nominated for Grammys and Emmy Awards in the past, but this is our first Tony," says Donald Hicken, chairman of the school's theater department. "Shalita is over the moon. She's an amazingly gifted actor and this was clear from her audition for entrance as a 9 th grader at BSA. One of our trustees kind of begged me to audition her. Ordinarily, I wouldn't see her because it was outside our regular audition week.

For a decade, the news from the city schools was good. Buildings might be dilapidated, deficits might bring schools to the brink of bankruptcy, and superintendents might be fired, but every summer, educators released test results standing next to charts that showed steady improvement. Baltimore was no longer the worst school system in the state. But for the past three years, progress — as measured by test scores — has virtually stalled. Critics of CEO Andrés Alonso say the lack of continued improvement shows that he has failed to make the nuts and bolts of teaching his focus.

Updated: Baltimore City police sent out a release around 2:30 p.m. informing that Guadalupe Sosa and Michael Carter, the two Baltimore School for the Arts students who went missing Wednesday, have been found safe and unharmed.    Original Post: Baltimore school officials are spreading word that two students from the Baltimore School for the Arts left the school Wednesday morning, and to date have not been seen or heard from...

Rachel Hilson , a 15-year-old sophomore at the Baltimore School for the Arts, has landed a recurring role on "The Good Wife," the CBS hit drama now in its second season. She debuts Tuesday as Nisa, a study partner and love interest for Zach Florrick (played by Graham Phillips ), the teenage son of Alicia Florrick (played by Julianna Margulies ). Hilson has already shot three episodes and just got word this week that she'll be shooting a fourth. Quite a big break for a young actress whose other credits are more along the lines of lower-school plays at McDonogh.

Unimpressed with the elementary school in her Baltimore neighborhood, Bobbi Macdonald set out to create her own. She founded the City Neighborhoods Foundation in 2003, the year her oldest daughter started kindergarten and the state of Maryland began allowing charter schools. Ten years later, the nonprofit is running three schools: City Neighbors Charter School, City Neighbors Hamilton and City Neighbors High School. All are known for student engagement and attendance rates that top 90 percent.

As the founder of KIPP Baltimore, which operates two high-performing public charter schools in the city, I am heartened and encouraged by our progress over the past six years under schools CEO Andrés Alonso. As I move to a new role as executive director of MarylandCAN - the Maryland Campaign for Achievement Now - I am hopeful that many of the policies and approaches that have driven this progress will be replicated in other Maryland school systems. But the work in Baltimore is far from over.

Why doesn't Baltimore's schools CEO need teaching experience, like other superintendents in the state? It was a question on the mind of many education observers last week, after hearing that the city's schools chief is not bound by the same requirements. It was also an issue of confusion for city school officials who, early in the day Tuesday, believed Tisha Edwards, 42 - who will soon become the city's interim schools CEO - would need to apply for a state waiver because while she has been a principal, she has never been a teacher.

The reverberations from the departure of Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso will be felt nationally as well as locally. Six years ago, I was a member of the Baltimore school board that hired him. Our risky vision was to try to recruit a game-changer whose achievements would surpass those of the heralded superintendents in New York (Joel Klein, whom Mr. Alonso served as a deputy), Chicago (Arne Duncan) and D.C. (Michelle Rhee). What we sought was what we got, and then some. Mr. Alonso initiated wave after wave of reforms: higher test scores, higher graduation rate, extensive school choice, a nationally groundbreaking transformation of expectations for students with disabilities, a progressive teacher contract, a steep drop in expulsions and suspensions, a remarkable 10-year plan for school facilities, and more.

As many times as it rolls around, I never outgrow the FlowerMart, which opened Friday and runs through Saturday. It's held in May and timed to take advantage of the best part of Maryland's spring. Any event that draws so many families, especially babies in strollers, mothers and grandmothers, to a hallowed Baltimore neighborhood gets my vote, even if, truth be told, I am not much of crab cake fancier. Mount Vernon has long fascinated me. I was not long free of those baby carriages when I was taken along Charles Street and spied an exotic retail mix of first-floor and basement-level shops selling old maps, rare clocks, books, antiques or other items not found at Woolworth's.

The Baltimore School for the Arts can boast its first nomination for a Tony Award -- thanks to graduate Shalita Grant, whose debut Broadway bow has won her a nod for Best Featured Actress in a Play. "Graduates have been nominated for Grammys and Emmy Awards in the past, but this is our first Tony," says Donald Hicken, chairman of the school's theater department. "Shalita is over the moon. She's an amazingly gifted actor and this was clear from her audition for entrance as a 9 th grader at BSA. One of our trustees kind of begged me to audition her. Ordinarily, I wouldn't see her because it was outside our regular audition week.

I was a teacher-mentor in the Baltimore City schools years ago when the city went $57 million in debt and we were all fired ("Schools audit draws concern," Oct. 9). I remember thinking at the time that the school board must have been sleeping not to have noticed the discrepancies in funding. Well, what do you know: The new school board has the same problem. Why do they accept what they are told? Isn't it their job to see through the spin to oversee what is going on in the system and make sure the job is being done?

Since last November, Baltimore MayorStephanie Rawlings-Blakehas been trying to raise $11 million in new revenue for her Better Schools Initiative by continuing the city's existing bottle tax, increasing that tax by 150 percent, and contributing 10 percent of the projected revenue from the proposed downtown casino. In an editorial this week, the Baltimore Sun intimates that the City Council should accept this proposal, since "no viable alternative has emerged. " I beg to differ. One viable alternative, proposed months ago, would be to use a substantially larger percentage of the projected casino revenue.

I hope you have child-care plans lined up because Baltimore County Public Schools said today that the last day of classes will be Friday, June 14, instead of Tuesday, June 18. More information here: http://www.bcps.org/news/articles/article3220.html

Baltimore City school officials say the nearly $1.2 billion budget the system unveiled last week will fund a raft of new academic endeavors, among them a new team to upgrade instruction in the sciences to meet the higher standards of the new national "core" curriculum and additional programs for academically gifted students. This is all to the good if it helps the city attract and retain more young families with children for whom strong public schools are often the most important factor in choosing where to live.