Half of the library shelves remain bare at Carver Vocational Technical High School in Baltimore City. Wires hang exposed on the halls. Half of the students do not even have a locker because so many are broken beyond repair.
Six miles and seemingly another world away, movers are putting the final touches on a renovation at the private Gilman School. The architect fitted all the classrooms with wireless Internet access, restored the stained glass windows in the chandelier-lighted and wood-paneled library and replaced all the chalkboards with dry-erase boards and interactive white boards, which allow teachers to project Web sites.
The two schools represent the disparities between the learning environments a public school budget and a $20,000 tuition can buy in Baltimore City.
But students and administrators at both schools expressed excitement about their respective renovations, which, on Monday, start for Carver and end for Gilman.
Carver Principal Michael Frederick smiles when he talks about motivating teachers to help students make adequate yearly progress on the state tests for the first time in the school?s history last year. But he can?t wait to see what will happen after the $30 million rehab of the classrooms, auditorium, library and gymnasium.
“You know how you feel better in a clean car?” asks Frederick, as he sits in his office Friday, where the funky smell of dead rat lodged behind his bookcase punctuates the air.
“If we can do that well on tests now, can you imagine how well we will do with a new facility? We?ll go through the roof.”
Some of the classrooms at Carver are so hot, windows are propped open, despite the sleet tapping on sidewalks outside. But students and teachers prefer to have heat compared to last week when the furnace stopped working.
Frederick looks forward to turning on the air conditioning for those hot spring days in a building that has not seen renovations like this since 1953.
Librarian Cary Stanger wants more books and to be able to plug in all of the library?s computers without blowing a fuse.
“I want to be able to drink from the water fountains,” says Andrew Wallace, a junior.
Further north, light pours in from the five windows of a classroom at Gilman, where cushy, blue chairs line long tables beside two fireplaces. Framed, black-and-white photographs of suit-clad teenagers hang on the walls as a homage to earlier graduating classes.
A sign marks the entranceway into a gathering room specially designed as a hang-out for seniors, and a crew decorates a Christmas tree in the lounge.
The students? yearbook room boasts Apple computers and a photography dark room.
Ryan Carey, who has taught history at the all-boys school for five years, is so pleased with the $15 million renovation at the upper school — that?s private school-speak for high school — he?s brought his parents who are visiting from Connecticut for a tour.
“This really is an unbelievable environment for teaching and learning,” Carey says. “Hopefully, this raises the level of what we?re doing in class.”
