Everybody insisted they cared about the children in 11 failing Baltimore City schools, but the question was how tough legislators were going to be on the officials who run them.
The answer was not tough enough for Republican lawmakers and Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who lost a 30-17 vote to override his veto of a measure to delay state takeover of seven city middle schools and four high schools until 2008. The state School Board wanted someone else to run those schools next year.
The delay could call into question $171 million in federal funds for Maryland schools because it may violate the No Child Left Behind act, U.S. education officials said. The state attorney general disputes that interpretation of federal rules. The House already had rejected Ehrlich?s action on Saturday in a debate that turned bitter at times.
Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley, School Superintendent Bonnie Copeland and representatives of state teachers unions actively lobbied legislators Monday and watched the debate from the gallery. O?Malley got what he wanted ? another year to run the schools.
“The toughest thing to do in the U.S. is to turn around a big city school system,” he said.
O?Malley and Baltimore City legislators point to progress being made in elementary schools. But opponents said some of these high schools had been on watch lists for close to a decade, and remedies had not been taken.
“The test scores are not where they want them to be,” said Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, D-Baltimore, the majority leader and a longtime employee of the Baltimore City schools.
He said this would be “the first public school system in the history of the United States to take this action,” and it would be “a reminder of their inadequacy” to the students and contrary to the principal of “local control.”
Sen. Lowell Stoltzfus, the Republican leader, said the measure pits local control against the good of children.
“I think we all care about the kids in Baltimore City. The people who have controlled this system have failed miserably,” Stoltzfus said.
Products of these schools have only single-digits passing rates in subjects such as biology and geometry.
