Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises has made more than $1 million to watch her city’s schools fail.
Last year, 41% of all Baltimore public high school students earned a GPA below 1.0. That’s one of many systemic school failures in Charm City. Despite this, Santelises received a salary hike to $375,688. She is one of the highest-paid school leaders in the country.
As Santelises’s students repeatedly fail to meet even the most basic scholastic requirements, her salary keeps going up. What other profession rewards people so for failure?
Santelises has the highest salary ever for a Maryland superintendent. During her five years in charge, her salary went from $298,000 in 2016 to the most recent figure mentioned above. That’s a startling 26% increase in salary.
In that light, consider a 2021 report by Project Baltimore, which revealed that a high school student in Baltimore City passed only three classes in four years. This student ranked in the top half of the high school’s class with a 0.13 GPA. How is this student prepared to be a valuable member of society? How is he or she ready to live in the real world? Such stories are all too familiar for Baltimore residents.
“There are a lot of unfortunate and bad truths in Baltimore City, and this is one of them,” Kimberly Klacik, a Baltimore resident, talk show host, and former Congressional candidate, told me. “The Baltimore City Public Schools CEO, Dr. Sonja Santelises, is performing badly, but she was awarded with a raise. Students in Baltimore schools have poor performances in subjects like math, reading, and writing.”
Baltimore City schools have worsened in nearly every metric during Santelises’s time as CEO. Graduation rates have decreased (71% to 69%), college enrollment rates are down (13-point decrease), and school attendance has dropped sharply (88% to 80%). Baltimore City schools recorded their worst-ever scores on a countrywide assessment of student performances. The scores were significantly lower than the national average.
“Their poor performances will get them an uncertain outcome in their futures,” Klacik said. “It’s quite sad when you think about it.”
“It’s quite clear that Ms. Santelises prefers money and power over actually helping better the lives of our students. With the education rates we’ve seen in Baltimore over the last few years, it’s clear that students are not being set up for success — they’re being set up for a life on the street, in jail, or in the morgue,” Antonio Pitocco, Republican candidate for Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District, told me.
“The CEO of Baltimore schools has not earned her pay,” Gordana Schifanelli, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, told me. “High school students are reading at the kindergarten through third grade levels. Residents of Baltimore have suffered too long, and it’s time to end their abuse by career politicians.”
Baltimore is just the latest example of why school choice is needed. The stories coming from there are tragic. Baltimore City schools are preparing students for a life of poverty with little to no chance for any social mobility at an institution that is supposed to prepare children for the future. It’s a recurring cycle of poverty for the students and their families, while those in charge become millionaires. As Baltimore public schools have shown, the priority at such places is for administrators to get wealthy, not ensuring the students are properly educated.
