As students start to return to school for the new year, people should be paying attention to Baltimore City Public Schools. Baltimore has 20,500 students in the public high school system. It was recently discovered that 41% of all high school students earned a grade point average below 1.0. Yet, as the students in her system are failing, Dr. Sonja Santelises, the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, has a salary of $325,000, the highest ever for a Maryland superintendent. Even more troubling? Santelises was given a raise and a contract extension while having such paltry performances by the students in the school system.

The failures also occur at the elementary school level. Out of all the elementary students in Baltimore’s public school system, 52% had at least one failing grade in the first 3 quarters of the year. Students are failing at every level of the system, and school bureaucrats are being lavishly compensated. School students are being held hostage by incompetence while those in charge become wealthy.