After prodding from the state school board, Baltimore backed off yesterday from its earlier resistance to a state order to fix three low-achieving schools.
Baltimore "is fully committed to the goals" of school reform "and to setting high standards for all the schools," said Phillip H. Farfel, president of Baltimore's school board. But city officials want to improve the schools in their own way and more state money "is a critical need so the children of Baltimore will get an educational opportunity comparable to that in the suburbs," he said.
Under state rules, city school officials must submit reform plans for Arnett Brown Middle, Calverton Middle and Furman Templeton Elementary by March 15.
Local officials ignored the state's schedule for a week. For example, when the state issued its reform order last week, city officials did not distribute the state-prepared send-home handouts for students and parents explaining the process. And state-appointed evaluation teams, who were to visit city schools by today to help them begin planning reforms, have not yet been in the schools.
Dr. Farfel said they considered the handouts "optional" and the state teams an infringement on local authority. He said last night, however, that the city would submit its plans by the state deadline.
Yesterday's letter to Dr. Farfel from state school board President Christopher T. Cross reiterated the timetable. It also denied Baltimore's request for a hearing to appeal the state's order to shake up the three schools.
There is no provision in the state's school-reform regulations for a hearing that challenges the whole reform process, Mr. Cross said. However, after the city submits its initial proposals for each school, it may hold a hearing to discuss state action on the plans.
"Saying that we will not entertain a hearing basically says we are not halting the program; we are not attenuating the process," he said.
In the letter, the state board declined to spare Baltimore in this second year of Maryland's school-accountability program, designed to order local officials to take action when attendance and test scores suggest that a school is taking an academic nose dive.
If the state is not satisfied with the response of local officials to a reform directive, it may take control of a failing school and have it operated by a third party, such as a university or community group.
Last year, the state told Baltimore to reorganize Patterson and Douglass high schools, and the city complied. Both schools got new principals and replaced a substantial proportion of their teachers. Both are reorganizing their academic programs.
Baltimore schools Superintendent Walter G. Amprey, with Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's support, has said that his administration recognizes the schools' needs and wants to reform them without state oversight.
Dr. Farfel and Dr. Amprey called state intervention unfair and unwelcome, in part because no other district's schools have been singled out for reform. Last week, they cited systemwide improvements in attendance rates and test scores as evidence that they don't need the state's help.
The state responded that its school-reform program targets individual troubled schools, not the system.
The Baltimore Teachers Union met yesterday with teachers from the three targeted schools. Teachers had received little information from either the city or the state, said BTU spokeswoman Linda Prudente. Some teachers, she said, didn't even know about the low achievement test scores of their schools until they read about them in the newspaper. Teachers feel "left out" and blamed for the problems of the schools, she said.