Baltimore Mayoral Candidate Proposes Terminating City/State Partnership For Education
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Taking control of public schools. A candidate in the mayor's race proposes ending the city/state partnership and shutting down some of the city's worst performing schools.
Political reporter Pat Warren has more on the plan and reaction to it.
City schools are always a hot button issue. Baltimore gets a lion's share of state education funds but the money never seems to be enough to cover the needs.
Mayoral candidate Otis Rolley believes too many city students are in desperate need of rescue from the kind of life he had growing up in New Jersey.
"I went to a failing public high school. It was one of the worst in the state so every morning after leaving an abusive home where a man who I thought was my father treated me like I was less than zero, I would walk past drug dealers and I would enter a school where I was being prepared and trained for failure," Rolley said.
Rolley proposes changes in the public school system that would include an end to the city/state partnership. The late Delegate Pete Rawlings, father of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, first promoted the partnership as a benefit to the city and the mayor believes it's working.
"I think you have to stick with what works. If you look at what the school was in the beginning of the partnership and you look at it now, you'd be blind if you couldn't see that we've made progress," Rawlings-Blake said.
Another candidate for mayor, Catherine Pugh---former councilmember and current state senator---has seen the partnership from both angles.
"I think the issue is how much more money we can get from the state to continue to create better schools in Baltimore," Pugh said.
Councilman Carl Stokes believes the partnership works best outside of politics.
"What they need is a little more money, frankly, from the city coffers but they're working very hard and I think they have a true partnership that has worked in moving progress in the Baltimore public schools," Stokes said.
Candidate Jody Landers said in a statement that Rolley's proposal has many blanks that need to be filled.
The mayoral primary is Sept. 13.
