THE MAIN ENTRANCE OF THE LAKE CLIFTON PARK BUILDING IN BALTIMORE. THE RENOVATION/BUILD PROJECT OPENED FOR STUDENTS IN SEPTEMBER 2019, PROVIDING A NEW FACILITY FOR THE REACH! PARTNERSHIP SCHOOL.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MCN BUILD

Shantell Roberts is a proud graduate of the oldest all-girls public high school in the U.S. Now, two decades after receiving her diploma from Western High School, the Baltimore native is helping lead an effort to give the 180-year-old college preparatory academy the facelift it so desperately needs.

“When I was in school, we had heating challenges, air conditioning challenges, so many problems that you unfortunately still find today,” says Roberts, vice chair of the Baltimore City Schools Board of Education. “As a young person, it was so prominent in all our schools that I normalized it. I would never want a young person to go to schools that were in the condition I experienced and think that’s what they deserved.”

But, as Roberts and other officials in Baltimore are well aware, the physical condition of the city’s schools has been a problem for decades, thanks to a twisted and knotty racial and social history that continues to affect the district’s more than 70,000 students — down from 85,000 a decade ago.

There are signs of progress, however. This year, Baltimore completed work on the first phase of the 21st Century School Buildings Program, a $1.1 billion joint city/state partnership that resulted in 28 new or significantly renovated schools. The program earned a 2024 Silver Magna Award (https://nsba.org/ASBJ/2024/april/2024-magna-awards-silver-award-winners). The next phase, which will start in the fall, will focus on more of the district’s high schools.

“The 21st Century initiative has impacted 20% of our portfolio, and we’re still trying to piecemeal address the remaining 80%,” says Lynette Washington, the district’s chief operating officer since 2018. “We’re trying to make this work with $50 million a year, when we should be investing well over $200 million a year in infrastructure. It’s an uphill battle every day.”

Research over the past two decades has shown that quality school buildings result in better academic outcomes and attendance rates as well as improved safety and security. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says Baltimore’s students lost about 1.5 million hours — the equivalent of 221,000 days of school — in the five years prior to the pandemic due to the physical condition of the buildings. In communities like Baltimore, where 80% of students come from low-income homes, lost instructional time directly affects learning and achievement.

“The condition of our school buildings reflects years of disinvestment, and this cumulative underfunding makes it very hard to just fix the problem in a way you can fix operating funds from one year to the next,” Sharfstein says. “Fixing something of this magnitude is a whole other order. I feel like I’m staring in the face of history when I look at these buildings.”

Infrastructure Funding

A COLLABORATIVE AREA INSIDE DOROTHY I. HEIGHT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

PHOTO CREDIT: CHO BENN HOLBACK+ASSOCIATES

Baltimore’s efforts to improve its facilities come at a crisis point for districts across the nation that also are dealing with long-standing school infrastructure problems. While more investment in school infrastructure appears to be a common-sense fix to a solvable problem, widespread improvements still seem far in the future despite fierce lobbying at the state and federal levels to spend more on facilities.

And the costs only are going up. In Chicago, the nation’s third-largest school district, a majority of students are Black or Latino and almost 75% live at or below the poverty line. Solving all the district’s facilities issues would cost more than $14 billion, according to a 2023 report published by the district. The numbers in Baltimore, which has 250,000 fewer students, are remarkably similar.

Since COVID, districts across the nation have used federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds for facilities improvements, largely to address issues around heating, ventilation, and air conditioning problems. And in January, the Biden administration announced an additional $47 million in grants over five years to help states fund assessments in high-need districts.

The infusion of federal dollars, while good for local districts, only touches on part of the problem, says Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, a national nonprofit that advocates for K-12 infrastructure improvements. A 2021 report by Filardo’s organization estimates that school infrastructure investments nationwide are $85 billion less than they should be annually, and that gap is continuing to grow.

“Funding for school infrastructure is very local, which means it’s the most inequitable,” Filardo says. “If you don’t have the resources to improve your buildings, which happens frequently in communities that have significant lower-income populations, and you don’t have help from the state or the federal government, then you’re in a constant struggle that benefits no one.”

Washington, who joined the district as the executive director of facilities in 2013, points to surrounding counties in Maryland that invest far more on infrastructure than Baltimore does. Because the counties have more access to resources than the city, which has seen tax revenue recede as its population has declined and the number of low-income families has increased, the disparity is apparent despite the widespread need.

“When I came to Baltimore, the first thing I did was look at what was happening in other school systems,” she says. “At that time, we were receiving $17 million for maintenance of 170 plus school buildings that were quickly aging. When you look at our neighboring counties, they were spending more than $100 million annually on infrastructure. And the state was not helping to make up that difference.”

Baltimore’s problems date back to the 1930s, when the state of Maryland and the city refused to fund schools in majority Black neighborhoods, using a process known as redlining. That process, developed by the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration, color-coded the city neighborhoods by investment grade. Majority Black neighborhoods were coded red, which meant homeowners could not receive federally insured loans.

As a result, the city’s population remains largely segregated to this day, with violence and drugs concentrated in areas that were originally redlined. Attempts at urban renewal, which led to new highways and housing projects, further displaced families in the 1980s and 1990s. The city also has been blindsided by high unemployment and the mass incarceration of many low-income residents.

“Our system was systemically and intentionally disenfranchised, and as you peel back the onion it is very sad and very disheartening,” says Roberts, who is in her fifth year on the school board and chairs the board’s operations committee. “Some of the stories you hear just make you want to cry.”

Success With Bonds

A COLLABORATIVE AREA INSIDE DOROTHY I. HEIGHT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.
PHOTO CREDIT: CHO BENN HOLBACK+ASSOCIATES

By contrast, Auburn Public Schools, an 18,000-student district about 20 miles south of Seattle, Washington, saw voters approve a record $456 million bond issue in 2016 that resulted in the replacement and expansion of a middle school and five elementary schools, all of which were built between 1945 and 1965. The district also built two new elementary schools with the bond funds.

Vicki Alonzo, Auburn’s executive director of communications, attributes the bond’s passage to an “amazing citizens’ ad-hoc committee process.” The 60-person committee, which consisted of parents, community members, and district staff, met weekly for three months to help develop a 10-year facilities plan that the school board approved.

Due to steady enrollment increases — Auburn has grown steadily over the past two decades even as other districts in the state have declined — that resulted in portable buildings, Alonzo says the committee members wanted to replace the facilities and increase capacity in the elementary grades from 450 students to 650 at each school.

“There also were a lot of safety concerns because it’s a different environment now, and (security) was not a lens they used when they built schools 60 or 70 years ago,” Alonzo says, noting most of the schools were built with large, open courtyards and classrooms with easily accessible exterior windows. “Egress and parking were also huge concerns, and we also live in an earthquake zone, and the buildings were not constructed to meet those standards.”

Those factors, combined with the successful rebuilding of Auburn High School in 2014, helped the district pass the 2016 bond, clearing a 60% approval threshold required by the state. Since that time, all schools have been replaced or built and the only project remaining is the reconstruction of the middle school athletic fields.

“We raised and rebuilt the existing schools on their current sites, starting with the middle school, and each elementary campus was completed in just over a calendar year,” Alonzo says, adding that the old middle school was used as a temporary facility while the others were being constructed. “All eight of the projects are on time and on budget, and there have been no cost overruns despite the pandemic. We’re very proud.”

So proud, in fact, that the board established another ad hoc committee in the fall of 2023 to look at its middle school campuses, which Alonzo says are “bursting at the seams with kids.” Another bond referendum may occur as soon as this November.

In 2014, voters in Haddon Township, New Jersey, approved a referendum to renovate and add space to the district’s five elementary schools. This March, despite having some of the highest property taxes in the state and a projected $800,000 loss in state funding this fall, voters supported an additional $31 million in bonds to improve the middle and high school campuses by an almost 2-1 margin.

Extensive, long-term community engagement and a coalition of active parents helped make this happen, says Robert Fisicaro, superintendent of the 2,100-student district.

Fisicaro, who became superintendent in August 2020, says the bond was successful because district leaders “made a commitment from the beginning to develop it with the community instead of for the community.” Targeted community surveys were sent out in the fall of 2020 to assess the district’s strengths and needs, and expanded programming at the middle and high schools topped the list.

The bond was developed based on the survey results, and parents and community members became “salespeople” for the referendum, Fisicaro says. But there were obstacles, as rising costs for materials and construction due to inflation required the bond to be scaled back.

Plans to purchase a closed Catholic school from the Camden Diocese to provide full-time preschool were abandoned due to a “shocking sticker price” for renovations. Some voters scrutinized plans to upgrade athletic fields and locker rooms as the district faces a teacher shortage, contract negotiations, and possible reductions in force due to the loss of state aid.

“We had to say that the goals of this are not athletics in a vacuum, but that it’s important to deliver on the needs for holistic wellness as part of an education program,” he says. “Our students need more space to move, to breathe, to be outside. This was as much about the field hockey team and the marching band as the football team or soccer squad.”

Ultimately, the 2024 bond prevailed, and all seven of Haddon Township’s schools will see improvements. Fisicaro attributes the success to the district’s long-standing commitment to “deliver on the promise that every student has a sense of belonging and significance.”

Plans For The Future

CALVIN M. RODWELL ELEMENTARY/MIDDLE SCHOOL SCIENCE LAB.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DESIGN COLLECTIVE INC.
PHOTO CREDIT: KARL CONNOLLY

More than a decade ago, as the state faced a long-running and still ongoing lawsuit from the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union over school funding, the first phase of the 21st Century Buildings Program was hatched. The city, school district, and state funded the program’s $1.1 billion first phase with oversight from the Maryland Stadium Authority.

Filardo, who lives in Washington, D.C., says it wasn’t until the community rose up and demanded better school facilities that things started to shift in Baltimore.

“In a sense, the solution is complicated, but it’s accessible,” she says. “However, it’s only accessible when you have that sense of public entitlement, that we owe our communities and our children something decent, something healthy and something safe. There has to be a strong sense that this is not OK.”

Now, with the first phase complete, Roberts says the groups must double down further to improve the rest of the schools. “Educating the whole child is not just the school system’s job,” she says. “It takes an all-hands-on approach that involves housing, transportation, food insecurity, public health, mental health, and safety. There are so many aspects of this that all meet at the school and affect student outcomes.”

Washington concurs. She believes the state should help equalize funding for Baltimore because the city does not have the same access to resources as other counties.

“Baltimore City Schools’ problem didn’t just happen,” she says. “It happened because different policies were put in place that accelerated the decline in the way it did. Not acknowledging that various factors caused this decline and this disinvestment in the way that it did leaves Baltimore struggling to give children the schools they deserve. Our infrastructure should support our children as they learn to be competitive and move forward. But until we can get that support on a sustained basis, we can’t truly plan for the future. And that makes the hill even tougher to climb.”