Baltimore City schools chief Andres Alonso is expected to announce plans tonight to open nine new transformation schools for public school students in sixth through 12th grades.
The schools are slated to open next year as part of a campaign to open 24 by 2011.
Each of the 24 schools will have a different theme, but three planned for 2009 are for students at risk of dropping out, while six focus on preparing students for college.
“Everything we do is about taking student success a step higher,” Alonso said.
“We have to provide every parent and every student with a setting that they want, that they would choose not out of necessity but out of choice. Every parent should feel right about the school their child attends.”
The new schools are based on programs in Baltimore, New York City — where Alonso served as deputy chancellor — and Philadelphia.
One of the college preparatory schools that Alonso plans to bring to Baltimore is an all-girls school that for the past two years has had New York City’s highest graduation rate, 100 percent in 2006 and 97 percent in 2007.
All of those graduates were accepted into college.
Ann Tisch, a former CBS News correspondent, founded the Young Women’s Leadership Academy program in 1996 with a school for inner-city girls in East Harlem. It was the first single-sex school to open in the country in nearly 30 years.
Western High School is the only all-girls public high school in Baltimore.
“We think offering this choice to girls in the inner cities is important and is very beneficial to them,” Tisch said.
“We’ve said all along it’s not for everyone.”
Programs at two Baltimore academies will be offered at two more schools.
The Bluford Drew Jamison STEM Academy, an all-boys school that focuses on science, technology, engineering and math, opened in East Baltimore this past year and achieved annual rising No Child Left Behind benchmarks; the Northwood Appold Community Academy, which has a freedom and democracy theme, opened in North Baltimore in 2005 and each year has improved students’ overall performance.
“These will be new schools with new options and high expectations,” Alonso said.
“They will not just fill in the gaps. They will be models for all our schools.”
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