I think I'll have about a month's worth of blog entries and stories out of tonight's city school board meeting. The proposed budget for next academic year, including 179 central office jobs slated for elimination, would ordinarily be big news on its own. But it pales in comparison with the facilities plan presented tonight, which involves the closure, relocation, opening, merger or expansion of about three dozen schools. Bottom line: Failing schools and schools that students are not choosing to attend close. Successful and popular schools expand, in some cases merging with and taking over failing schools. Lemmel Middle, Thurgood Marshall High, Samuel Banks High and Harriet Tubman Elementary would be gone. Paquin, which at this point has become an institution for its 40 years serving pregnant girls and teen mothers but only uses a fraction of its building capacity, would merge with the Baltimore Rising Star Academy. The National Academy Foundation high school would move and take over struggling Dunbar Middle, paving the way for both it and Digital Harbor High to expand.
Read on for specifics. Check out this map we've done online. And see my story in tomorrow's paper.
Proposed facilities reorganization
Elementary:
The thriving William Pinderhughes Elementary would move out of its existing building and move into the building now occupied by struggling George Kelson Elementary/Middle. Pinderhughes would absorb Kelson's student body, expanding from 176 students to 481.
Harriet Tubman Elementary, a low-performing and under-enrolled school, would close. Students would be sent to Harlem Park Elementary/Middle, Bentalou Elementary and Lockerman Bundy Elementary.
Middle and high:
William H. Lemmel Middle would close, but its building would remain open for other schools. ConneXions Community Leadership Academy, a charter middle/high school whose middle school portion is now located in Lemmel's building, would move its high school program there as well. The Institute of Business and Entrepreneurship (IBE) would move from the Walbrook building to the Lemmel building. A new alternative school run by Diploma Plus would also open. The alternative school currently in the Lemmel building would move to an unused portable at 5000 Gwynn Oak Ave.
Homeland Security Academy in the Walbrook building would close. With the relocation of IBE to Lemmel, the Walbrook complex would be empty for a year. In the summer of 2010, a new middle/high school by Bluford Drew Jemison as well as the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women would move in. For the 2009-2010 academic year, the new Bluford school would be located alongside Diggs-Johnson Middle. The Baltimore Leadership School would be located in Western High.
The National Academy Foundation High, currently located alongside Digital Harbor High, would move into the Dunbar Middle and former Thomas G. Hayes Elementary buildings. (Hayes already had closed, and Dunbar High has been located there temporarily during a renovation of its building.) NAF would become a combined middle/high school, absorbing the population from Dunbar Middle.
Digital Harbor High School would expand using the space vacated by NAF.
The Baltimore Rising Star Academy, an alternative school for over-age middle school students now located at Chinquapin Middle, would move to the building now occupied by Laurence G. Paquin Middle/High, a school for pregnant girls and teen moms. Paquin is under-enrolled while Rising Star needs more space.
Thurgood Marshall and Samuel Banks high schools, located in the same building, would both close. Maritime Industries Academy would move out of its space in a strip mall and into the Marshall/Banks building, tripling in size. In the summer of 2010, a second school – possibly one of the new middle/high schools to be run by the College Board – would also open in this location.
The Reach middle/high school would move from the Southeast Middle building to the Lake Clifton campus, sharing space with the schools already there. The new One Bright Ray alternative school would open in the old Reach space at Southeast.
A new middle/high school run by Northwood Appold Community Foundation would open in the system's Professional Development Center alongside the Friendship Academy of Engineering and Technology.
New Era Academy would expand in its existing location to include a middle school.
A second new alternative school run by Diploma Plus would open in the Fairmount-Harford building, alongside the Achievement Academy at Harbor City High.
A new school run by East Baltimore Development Inc. would open on the grounds of the former Elmer Henderson Elementary.
Charters:
A second City Neighbors school would open in the Hamilton Middle building.
The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) would open an elementary charter in the former Malcolm X Elementary building.
Southwest Baltimore Charter would relocate from its space in James McHenry Elementary to a building not owned by the school system.
