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The Calvert Street Communist Party Newsletter has a "preview story" on the new budget for Baltimore City Schools, and from what I read, I have to say that I am impressed. It seems like there is finally an adult running the show down on North Ave.
Andres Alonso is striking at the heart at what has been a long-building problem in the Baltimore City Schools: a central office that exists to create jobs for educators who don't want to teach anymore. His plan involves cutting a net of 309 jobs, and pushing responsibility for educating students out from a centralized bureacracy and into the hands of principals and teachers. Principals will have much greater autonomy in running their schools -- including budgetary autonomy.
My favorite quote, because I think it is exactly the direction the city school system should take:
"What I do know is that the focus of responsibility needs to be near the kids. If you cannot create that sense of responsibility and efficacy about the work, we're not going to make the system better."
Another great paragraph from the article:
Asked what would happen if no schools wanted some of the displaced central office employees, Alonso said, "If we have somebody who is, let's say, a curriculum specialist or director and nobody wants to hire that person at the school level, we're doing a really good thing in terms of what's going to happen."
Translation: "If we are paying someone money at the Central Office that no one wants in the schools, why are they working for the school system? We should clean that dead wood out!"
These moves alone will not suddenly "save" Baltimore City schools. Baltimore City still has the highest rate of heroin addiction per capita, Baltimore City is still the 2nd most dangerous city in the United States, and Baltimore City still has a poverty rate that hovers in the mid-30s. It also has the largest percentage of students in the school lunch program. And Baltimore City has one of the highest rates of single-head-of-household families in the country. All of these social issues put extreme pressure on a school system.
But Andres Alonso seems to recognize that he cannot control that. He can only control the quality -- and efficacy -- of education:
Under the current structure, Alonso said, "responsibility is in essence avoided."
Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a trend for school systems to address education, and move away from becoming surrogate parenting centers or indoctrination warehouses. (We live in hope, and die in despair.) Alonso should next target the attitudes and approaches used in education today. Teaching should not just be a job, but a calling. It is not a vocation, it should be a deep yearning of the heart. Too many educational theories and policies today --- often drafted by bureaucrats who haven't taught in a classroom in years -- have made teaching just another job. And those results have been disastrous.
Here's a an attaboy to Andres Alonso for recognizing that his first obligation is to teach the children well, and for taking the first steps on the jouney to do that.