State and Baltimore educators are expected to announce today that they're working now as partners in planning academic reforms ordered Feb. 1 for Arnett J. Brown Middle, Calverton Middle and Furman Templeton Elementary schools.
The agreement ends a two-week standoff during which city officials resisted a state order to shake up the three
low-achieving city schools.
Their decision came as two legislators appealed to the governor for $1.5 million for those school reforms this week.
Baltimore no longer will bar state information-gathering teams from visiting the schools, Phillip H. Farfel, school board president, said yesterday. The state school board has pledged to help Baltimore find financing for the restructuring at the three schools, its president, Christopher T. Cross, said late yesterday.
The pledge makes state intervention in local school matters more palatable but not less painful, Baltimore school officials said yesterday. They added, however, that they welcome the type of pain that will lead to gain.
"I don't mind if it's what is best for the children," said School Superintendent Walter G. Amprey after a public hearing yesterday. "It may put the schools further under the microscope, but we have a responsibility to work on these schools, and if the kind of support is there that this agreement holds, then it's only appropriate for us to be examined."
Neither the amount nor the source of the funding is specified by the pledge, which state and Baltimore school board presidents reached last Friday and fleshed out this week.
First, budgets must be determined by school-improvement teams working with Baltimore and state school officials. The dollars sought will most likely pay for one-time needs, such as the staff training to launch reforms, not for school operating costs, Mr. Cross said.
Federal, state, local or private dollars may ultimately be used. Mr. Farfel and Mr. Cross separately said they'd start by supporting the request now before Gov. Parris N. Glendening.
In a Feb. 13 letter, two state legislators asked for $1.36 million to help the three schools designated for reforms this year -- and Douglass and Patterson high schools, which began restructuring last year.
The proposal, drafted by Sen. Clarence W. Blount and Del. Howard P. Rawlings in consultation with State Schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, also requests $130,800 for the state's Department of Education to provide technical support to the schools. Dr. Grasmick had requested funds to assist in reforming under-performing schools in the last state budget but did not receive them.
Financing had become the main sticking point in negotiations that started Feb. 1, when state educators told Baltimore to improve test scores and attendance at the three schools -- or risk losing control of them.
After successfully negotiating with the state to reduce the number of designated schools from nine to three, Baltimore school officials refused to comply. Ignoring the state's timetable for the reform process -- which was to begin with state fact-finders visiting the three schools -- they demanded a halt to the reform program.
By the end of last week, however, their stance shifted. They would submit a plan by the state's first major deadline, they said -- if the state would find financial aid for the schools designated for reforms.
As models, they pointed to last year's state-mandated reorganizations at Baltimore's Douglass and Patterson High Schools, the first schools designated for reforms. The two schools found help from various sources: Douglass obtained Defense Department money to develop its ROTC program. Patterson received an estimated $800,000 in state school construction funds for repairs.
Baltimore's challenge to the reform program was the first of its kind met by the state. Last year, Baltimore didn't fight the order to reorganize Patterson and Douglass, and to date schools in no other districts have been designated.
No appeals process -- and no limits on the number of schools named -- are specified in the regulations for the reform program. State and Baltimore school officials insisted this week's action did not set any precedents for districts that in the future may wish to challenge state reform mandates. Rather, they called the negotiations a natural step in building a partnership.
Mr. Farfel said yesterday Baltimore educators will continue topress the state to re-examine the formula used to choose academically troubled schools for restructuring. It is a formula that considers school test scores and attendance rates but not factors such as poverty and transience.
"We'll listen to what they have to say," Mr. Cross said yesterday. Throughout the negotiations, state school officials called their formula a fair way to hold all schools to the same standards of achievement. Baltimore officials agreed with the standards, but argued that urban schools must surmount barriers to attain them.