In our recent report, "Buildings for Academic Excellence," the ACLU of Maryland credits the state government, particularly in the last four years, for increasing funding for school construction. That is a significant trend that ought to continue.
The ACLU is well aware of the need to upgrade school buildings in many counties across Maryland and has worked in state coalitions, and with leaders like Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith, toward that end.
The question is one of scale and local resources. In his opinion piece, "School facilities' foundation of fairness" (June 10), state school construction director David Lever sidesteps one of the ACLU's central points. The ability of the various counties to meet the needs for school construction funding is starkly different. The wealth of Baltimore City cannot support the school construction budgets common in the other large counties. In the past four years, Prince George's county has given $745 million to its school buildings, Baltimore County, $461 million. How much was Baltimore City able to contribute to improve its school buildings in the same period? $76 million. That's one-tenth of what Prince George's could produce for its schools. And, as we point out in the study, it's not because Baltimore City makes it a low priority, it's because of the low wealth-base it has to draw upon.
Our study simply points out that the state, which gives similar amounts of school construction funding to the large counties, ought to take this "local capacity" — the ability of each county to produce funding to improve its school buildings — into greater consideration.
The stream of funding available for Baltimore City schools from state, city, and federal sources is totally insufficient to bring the buildings up to accepted standards, much less create high-tech career and technology centers that other jurisdictions can consider. That's why the ACLU calls upon the state to re-think its role and agree to embark on a collaboration with the city, the school system and Baltimore's citizens to devise a shared, innovative funding plan to provide the $2.8 billion needed for city school buildings.
The state's school construction agency's stated mission is equity. We believe they can go further to meet that mission by acknowledging the scale of deficiencies in city school buildings and determining what larger role they can play.
Bebe Verdery, Baltimore
The writer is director of the ACLU of Maryland's Education Reform Project.