As the new school year approaches, Baltimore students and parents are rightly concerned about the surge in COVID-19 cases. But an even more pressing problem, low academic performance subsidized by massive amounts of taxpayer funding, long precedes COVID.

According to Fox Baltimore, “41% of all Baltimore City high school students, earned below a 1.0 grade point average. In other words, nearly half of the 20,500 public high school students in Baltimore earned less than a D average.” And even before the days of distance learning, roughly a quarter of students were at or below a 1.0 GPA. All of this happens under the watch of Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises, who rakes in $325,000 a year.