Baltimore City Council members questioned why the school system’s board has yet to renew a contract for Sonja Santelises, chief executive of the Baltimore City Public School System, while reviewing the district’s budget Tuesday.
The three-hour hearing had a delayed, tense start as Shantell Roberts, vice chair of the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners, ran late and ultimately didn’t arrive. The school board, chaired by Ronald McFadden, approved a $1.78 billion operating budget for fiscal year 2025 last month. More than $389 million of the budget comes from the city funds.
The board oversees the school system and hires its CEO. Despite council members’ alarm over the three-week expiration date on Santelises’ contract, McFadden did not respond to those concerns beyond stating that the board is still negotiating.
“We have until the very end of June,” McFadden said. Santelises’ contract expires June 30.
The five-member finance committee praised Santelises for her eight-year tenure, the district’s longest in decades, while acknowledging past criticisms of the district and her administration.
“While city schools may not be perfect and you may not be perfect, you have provided a very steady hand of leadership over an extended period of time, longer than most large city school districts in the entire nation,” Councilman Eric Costello, chair of the ways and means committee, said of Santelises.
Councilman Zeke Cohen, who recently won the Democratic primary for City Council president, said he had a “profound concern” that Santelises still does not have a contract at a time when federal emergency school funding has expired. The city is also entering into a third year of financing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s multibillion dollar education reform.
The operating budget earmarks more than $1.5 billion for Blueprint programs. City schools will receive more than $1 billion from the state for fiscal year 2025, accounting for more than 70% of the district’s general fund revenue. City funds account for 28% of district revenue.
“This is not the time for any sort of rapid transition. This is not the time to switch leadership,” Cohen said. “Having a solid and stable CEO, and the leadership you have brought to this position is extremely important to me and, I believe, to many of my colleagues.”
He urged that contract negotiationswrap up in a timely manner with “a contract [Santelises] deserves.”
Costello noted that the Blueprint requires the council to fund city schools at the legal minimum even if they didn’t vote to approve of the budget.
Council members also highlighted the district’s recent gains in students’ progress, particularly in early childhood education. City school students who attended a district prekindergarten program outperformed the state this year in an assessment that measures readiness for kindergarten.
City schools invested in early childhood education before the Blueprint mandated it, Santelises said. But state Blueprint funding for universal prekindergarten covers only families living at or below 300% of the poverty level, with a sliding scale of cost for families at varying income levels.
“Blueprint is very clear you’re only going to get funds for [children at certain poverty levels],” said Chris Doherty, city school’s chief finance officer. “It’s a financial challenge” to support all city school families participating in prekindergarten, he said.
Although the committee aired a wide range of concerns over students’ social media consumption, mental health issues, security and safety risks in schools, no member objected to a specific budget item. Councilman James Torrence repeatedly questioned how school police store and process film from body cameras, track overtime hours and what authority officers have after school hours.
“I’m deeply concerned with officers’ training,” Torrence said. He also asked for an audit of officers’ overtime. A federal investigation of a city school detective and Dunbar High School head football coach for fraudulent overtime found school police officers made $1.7 million in overtime wages in a 12-month span ending Sept. 30, 2021, a time when school was mostly virtual and many buildings were closed.
Santelises said the district performed an audit and improved its previously outdated timekeeping software.
Costello pushed for a clear start date for the district’s $1.5 million violent intervention program pilot anticipated to begin at four high schools next school year. School officials are still working out a memorandum of understanding with the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, which oversees the city’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy. MONSE and school officials said they plan to start the delayed program on the first day of school.
Councilwoman Odette Ramos asked how city schools are responding to the rapid growth of students who speak English as a second language, a number that has doubled since 2016 to 20% of all students. The Blueprint offers more per-pupil funding for schools that teach multilingual learners. City schools will receive nearly $87 million in Blueprint funding for those students.
City school data from the English Language Proficiency Assessment shows that less than 5% of multilingual learners who took the test were considered proficient. The district created a strategic plan to address the “tremendous growth” in the population, according to the district.
A fixture of school board meetings are parents of multilingual students asking for more translation services to communicate with their children’s teachers and administrators.
