Pugh announces at education rally that she's going to have an announcement, and then announces nothing at all - Entrepreneur Generations

Last Thursday, with around 2,000 other teachers, parents, students, and advocates for Baltimore City Public Schools, I attended a rally in Annapolis, as we collectively demanded that the funding gap for Baltimore City Schools be closed.

As I've written about previously, Baltimore City Public Schools are in a deficit because they have been chronically underfunded for decades, and that underfunding has intensified in recent years, as the state stopped adjusting for inflation and BCPSS buildings have continued to crumble. Principals have been telling staffs to expect deep cuts and layoffs of nearly 25% of the teaching force in many buildings.

The blame is mostly at the state level, but the city has also decreased its contribution to city schools in previous decades. Last year, the city contributed just $265 million to BCPSS, while they contributed $481 million to Baltimore City police. According to WBAL and Jayne Miller, police spending in Baltimore has increased 48%, while commitments to education are down 8% and health down 30%.

So, on that warm-for-February Thursday night last week, we didn't expect to hear from Mayor Pugh, who had been mostly silent about the issue of the huge budget deficit in the schools in her city. However, soon some of the speakers started saying that she would be arriving.

Later, we heard that until around 4 p.m., she had no plans to come and address the crowd. However, she did come. Props to her for that, I guess.

During her brief address, she announced -- to the 2000 passionate students, teachers, and parents in front of her -- that she was going to have an announcement on Monday. (See my low-quality video below.)

What's the opposite of a mic drop? That's what the reaction of the crowd was. If she has an announcement, why not announce it to us? After all, we're here right now. We'll all be in school on Monday.

Mayor Pugh left to chants of "Prove it!" after what seemed to be a campaign promise instead of actual action.

And, on Monday, Baltimore City teachers and students and parents waited for what the announcement might be. Most of us expected some sort of plan with the state, and "I kick in this amount and the state kicks in this amount" sort of deal. Once we heard she was setting up in Annapolis, there was a collective groan of recognition for this, that maybe she was able to talk Hogan (something she ran on, her relationship with Larry Hogan) into footing over some money.

But it wasn't even that. In fact, it was nothing at all. Just a public plea to Governor Hogan to work with the city, to save the city, to be its fat white savior.

We need a lot more from Mayor Pugh. We need her to take a hard look at the budget and find the money for city schools, to redistribute some of the money to the schools that has been lost over the last two decades. If I were Governor Hogan, and I'm no fan, but I might even have expected to hear how she has made a commitment to education with her city budget and how, hopefully, he would then do the same with his much more ample state resources. But, no. Nothing.

This moment, two years after the Freddie Gray unrest, when the youth of the city collectively screamed to us that their lives had value and their government had let them down, could be Catherine Pugh's chance to make a commitment to the future of the city: to prove Baltimore's own Frederick Douglass's adage that it's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

However, she's flubbed badly so far.

Thankfully, there's still time.

I now have her office's number (410-396-3835) programmed in my phone. I call when I can, during planning periods. We need her commitment to our kids.

Hopefully she heeds all of our calls.



from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2m5pWgt Pugh announces at education rally that she's going to have an announcement, and then announces nothing at all - Entrepreneur Generations

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