On Mondays at 7 p.m., the voice of Meldon S. Hollis Jr. wafts over the airwaves of WEAA, Morgan State University's radio station. His talk show, "Middle Passage" -- the name for the voyage African slaves made to the New World -- is a free-wheeling discussion of issues confronting blacks.
Mr. Hollis recently devoted an entire show to the controversy surrounding the Tesseract program -- nine city schools run by Educational Alternatives Inc. Tesseract, the former school board president says flatly, has become a smoke screen hiding other, far more serious issues.
In December 1987, Mr. Hollis became the city's first black school board president when Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke named him to the post. His stormy nine-month stint was punctuated by bickering with other board members, all of whom were holdovers from the administrations of former Mayors William Donald Schaefer and Clarence H. Du Burns.
In September 1988, Mr. Hollis told members of a city political club that he had traced press leaks by feeding false information to board members. The mayor removed him from the leadership position, but he remained on the board for four years and chaired the curriculum committee.
Mr. Hollis, a graduate of Harvard Law School, remains keenly interested in education issues. In September, he was elected chair of the Baltimore Urban League. He voiced concern about the Tesseract program during a recent interview.
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Q: Does the superintendent have too much of his credibility riding on the success or failure of EAI?
A: I think the public perception is clearly that the superintendent has invested to the point where he can't back out of the EAI project. And the problem that makes for EAI is whether or not the public will believe that any evaluation that the school system provides of EAI is objective and independent. That's a problem with the superintendent allying himself so closely when in theory he's supposed to be part of the final group that evaluates the program . . . Even if the information that is provided is legitimate, I believe there will be a cloud of suspicion cast over it. And that's unfortunate. I think we would all have been better served if our people had been more independent and less personally involved.
Q: Have Mr. Amprey's appearances on behalf of EAI in places like Hartford, Conn., been appropriate for a school superintendent?
A: It is appropriate for a school superintendent to commit himself to an idea or a model and to proselytize that view or that model as an educational model within his own school system. I would not presume to tell people in Connecticut what is good for their school system unless that is my job.
The two dangers of being seen as someone who is seen doing the work of a private sector party is: one, there is an immediate suspicion that there is something in it for you, and you will have hell to pay proving that that is not true; and two, you fritter away the credibility of the chief official in a public school system.
I would prefer to be gambling away my credibility on the tough, tough issues of equity for our poorest and neediest children.
Q: Has the superintendent lost so much credibility that he ought to resign?
A: I don't think the superintendent ought to resign over EAI. The public has more than EAI to worry about.
Fundamentally, in a school system, the evaluation of a superintendent -- particularly in an urban school system like this -- is based on whether or not he has retained confidence or made progress in the areas you've identified for improvement.
We have had a terrible problem of math and science education in the city. We're almost off the charts in terms of lack of performance. The other thing is that our youngsters do not have the resources that they need for what can arguably be called a sufficient education, as measured by education available to other citizens in the state of Maryland. The problem of lack of resources has been here so long that there are parents who do not know that in other school systems, youngsters take books home after school to do homework.
There are people in the city who don't know that in school systems around the rest of the state, youngsters have recess -- they're allowed to go outside and play during the school day.
People do not know that in other school systems there are bands with band uniforms and that you can check out an instrument and take it home and practice. They do not know that there are intramural programs where youngsters have physical education. They don't know, because these things are not available to youngsters in the city of Baltimore. They don't know the way a school system is supposed to run.
Q: The superintendent's new contract requires paying him for the next several years, whether he resigns or not, whether he is fired or not. Do you think that's appropriate for any appointed official?
A: I don't understand it. I must confess, I don't understand it. Because historically, a courtesy that has been given to any new elected official is that of appointing the people who run the largest administrative agencies. And, of course, the largest agency in the city is the school system. I have never seen an instance where a sitting official gave a contract to one of the administrators that extended beyond the presumed term of the sitting official. It's just very unusual. Now, one can understand why Mayor Schmoke would feel confident that he will be the next mayor and, therefore, the contract is not coterminous with his own. But, at least in the past, there has been the courtesy of at least publicly pretending that there is a possibility that there might be a new mayor and that the new mayor might want the option of appointing a new superintendent. The first public act, as I remember of the new Mayor Schmoke, was to appoint a new school superintendent.
Q: EAI is only running nine schools, but its presence here seems to have redefined the debate over public education. Do you think too much attention is focused on the Tesseract schools and not enough on what is happening in the other schools?
A: Yes. That is close to a crime. If there is anything that should be debated in Baltimore and the state, it ought to be the crises caused by the lack of funding and the lack of resources for needy students. That's the No. 1 issue. It is clear to anyone that if you are a low-income youngster going to a neighborhood school in Baltimore . . . your chances of success are bleak.
That is not to say that there are not good schools and principals in Baltimore, because there are plenty of both. And that story is not told very often. But everybody knows about Poly, Western, City and the School for the Arts. And everybody knows about Roland Park. There are islands of excellence in this city.
But overall, the school system system is not performing to the level that most parents would think was acceptable. If it was, parents would not be in such a hurry to move, to get their youngsters into other school systems, and property values would not be going down, because the first thing that brings value to a community is a good school.
Q: Why is the city school system underfunded?
A: It is because of a subject that is very seldom talked about in public policy circles, as though it has fallen off the face of the earth. And that is, it's possible within our economy to segregate people very efficiently on the basis of race and on the basis of poverty.
The citizens in the city of Baltimore are taxed at a rate higher than anybody else in the state. But because you have a high concentration of poverty and the elderly, and you have an old infrastructure and you have high needs for public safety, there is great competition for those few dollars. And the city's youngsters lose out because they can't vote.
One cannot blame people for trying to move away from poverty; as a matter of fact, if you can get a better education for your child at a lower tax rate, you'd be crazy if you don't do it. But the result is not unexpected. And the state has not responded adequately to the high concentrations of poverty that are the outcome of public policies. The state has an obligation to do something so that every citizen has an adequate eduction. .
Q: When you were on the school board, you were an early supporter of EAI. Why are you critical now?
A: I visited an EAI school in Miami, and it was good to see them doing things that were considered educationally sound. During a presentation, they suggested that they were able to do all these things within the budget they had in Miami. I thought, well if they can bring this kind of innovation to our system within our budget, then they can make a contribution. EAI was saying it was going to save us money and it was going to show us how to better manage our system. It's not a contribution to do it at higher cost -- there are a thousand models that can do that.
Q: How much input did the school board have in working out the contract between EAI and and the city?
A: At the risk of being controversial, I believe the school board found out about EAI [the firm's contract with the city] the same way most of the other citizens did. And that's by reading it in the newspapers. [With more involvement by the board], I believe there would have been a much better model for bringing it into the school [system] that would have helped us avoid all of the controversy we have now.
I believe that large bureaucracies have to have competition, or they begin to serve themselves and themselves only. I believe that you've got to bring in competition and competition within a large system is good. The mistake that has been made is the suggestion that the only way to bring in competition is through a private entity.
Q: If the board had been given more input, what could have been done to create competition within the school system?
A: It would have made more sense, from my perspective, if you had said, "We have nine schools which we'd like for someone to take over and manage. And anyone who submits a proposal to us that is academically sound, and that works within the financial constraints that we pose as a school board, we'd like you to take a shot at it."
And the way you learn from situations like that is, you allow a church to take a shot at it if they think they can do it. You allow a parents group to come in and propose running a school if that's what they want to do. If the teachers think they know what's going on and principals don't, then allow the teachers union to run a model school and we'll see if they know what they're talking about. At the end of four or five years, then you've got some comparisons. You see what works and what doesn't. If something is not working and endangering the youngsters, you stop that experiment. I would have included that within the context of allowing any private entity to come in and run a school.
I think it was politically naive to only allow EAI to come in alone, because the battle then ends up over the private sector and whether EAI should make a profit. And there's deep distrust of the private sector within the school system bureaucracy. I would much rather have had the opportunity to compare what this church school or neighborhood school is doing compared to EAI.
=1 Terrie Snyder is a Baltimore freelance writer