Record on schools put to test

Primary: As the mayor launches a campaign pledging to make schools a priority, his efforts of the past are criticized.

By Tom Pelton | Sun Staff

July 15, 2003

Mayor Martin O'Malley watches as Raquel Taylor, 9, a pupil at Calvin Rodwell Elementary School, works on a computer. (Sun photo by Kim Hairston / July 14, 2003)

This is one in a series of occasional articles examining the record of Mayor Martin O'Malley.

When Martin O'Malley announced his candidacy for mayor in June 1999, he chose as his backdrop a drug corner as he declared that eliminating open-air drug markets would be his top priority.

Four years later, when he launched his re-election effort, he stood outside a school, City Springs Elementary on Caroline Street, as he declared that he would make "children, and their future, our No. 1 priority" for his second term in office.

To O'Malley's most prominent opponent in the September Democratic primary, Andrey Bundley, O'Malley's shift in focus from policing to schools looks like hypocritical political maneuvering.

O'Malley provided a 2 percent increase in city funds for the operation of the schools between 2000 and this year, according to school statistics, while he provided a 24 percent increase to the Police Department.

Moreover, since a change in state law in 1997, city mayors have been prohibited from running the public schools, which have received 54 percent more state money in exchange for increased state involvement and greater independence from City Hall.

But now O'Malley is being challenged politically by a high school principal, Bundley, who has made the city's education problems his central issue.

Bundley contends that O'Malley's recent series of appearances in the schools is designed to soften his image as a single-minded crime fighter, and to co-opt an issue on which he could be vulnerable. Some advocates for children and state legislators are also questioning the mayor's record on education.

"It's an anomaly in his behavior. He hasn't spent any time in the schools until now," said Bundley. "If you look at his budgets, you see that all of his money has gone into the Police Department. That has been his focus. But you can't focus only on that."

Bundley compared the city's schools to those of a Third World nation, with decaying buildings, lead in the drinking water and staggering dropout rates.

O'Malley strongly denied that he has become interested in the city schools only recently. And he said that using his influence, although reduced, to try to urge the reform of the schools is a logical extension of his overall goal to rejuvenate the city.

The mayor said he has lobbied hard for the schools in Annapolis throughout his term. And he said he helped legislators win a 15 percent per-pupil increase in state funding that has given the city the second-best-funded school system in the state, up from sixth before he took office.

With the additional money has come steadily improving test scores. For the first time this year, the majority of first- and second-graders in the city scored above the national average in math and reading on a national standardized test.

"We're on the brink of something great, something unprecedented in America - the real resurrection of a once-failed urban school system," said O'Malley during his June 23 speech at City Springs Elementary School.

Other improvements O'Malley points to include:

A 73 percent increase in the number of computers in city classrooms, from 15,424 in 2001 to 26,634 last year, giving the city's schools better than the state average of students per computer.

The number of schools with all-day kindergarten programs has risen from one in 1999 to all of the more than 100 elementary schools in the city today.

The mayor's commitment of money for school repair and construction has almost doubled from $8.8 million in fiscal year 1999 to $16 million in fiscal 2004.

At the same time, the mayor said in a recent interview, he has been frustrated by what he described as fiscal mismanagement by school administrators that has led to a budget deficit estimated at more than $40 million.

This financial crisis is forcing hundreds of layoffs, including the transfers of many academic coaches who, some say, are partly responsible for the test score increases.

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Record on schools put to test

Primary: As the mayor launches a campaign pledging to make schools a priority, his efforts of the past are criticized.

Related topic galleries: Primaries, Budgets and Budgeting, Academic Progress, Lisa A Gladden, Laws, School Examinations, Robert H Kittleman

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