Some Baltimore City schools are so dilapidated it is more cost-effective to build new ones — the first since 1998 — instead of renovating existing ones, officials say.
Nearly all of the city?s high schools are in “dire need of improvement,” and school officials who are now redirecting their facilties? plans to mesh with initiatives set forth by CEO Andres Alonso plan to next year recommend to the school board to build new schools, according to an updated education facilities master plan, which the school board will discuss tonight.
“It?s probably safest to say we?re in the consideration stage,” said Robin Allen, the school system?s facilities planner. “We realize it?s probably going to be necessary.”
Dr. Nathan A. Pitts-Ashburton Elementary/Middle School on Hilton Street is the newest in the city, at 10 years old. The last school built before that was Hampstead Hill Academy in 1991.
Alonso, who has served as schools chief for about a year, and Mayor Sheila Dixon have said they want to build 10 new schools in 10 years, an amibitious plan that in the past would not have been possible because of inadequate funding.
But, Allen said, the school system is planning to hire consultants to help it find the best avenues for alternative funding and private donations.
Officials have been evaluating over the past three years the way the system uses its school buildings, a response to a state mandate that requires updates at the start of each fiscal year because of the city?s declining enrollment.
City schools are designed for 125,000 students, but only about 80,000 are enrolled, Allen said.
Alonso has rolled out an array of new plans aimed at improving students? achievement and boosting enrollment. The creation of transition schools for sixth through 12th grades — which eliminates a difficult jump from middle to high school when many students may drop out — is one plan to which the school system has been adjusting while trying to find a use for extra space in schools.
But Allen believed that building new schools would also help increase enrollment.
She described the proposal as “an ?If you build it, they will come? scenario, where building new facilities gives the population the impression that what?s going on inside is more appropriately serving the student population.”
