Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Dr. Santelises discusses preparation for new school year
BALTIMORE - Students and teachers return to the classroom in just two weeks.
Baltimore City Public Schools will welcome students back on August 28.
CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises spoke with WJZ about how faculty and staff are getting ready for the new school year.
Santelises shared highlights, accomplishments and ongoing challenges the school system is facing going into the new school year.
"We have had a busy summer," Santelises said. "We are winding some of that down."
Educators are busy preparing for any challenges that may likely come as the first day of school crawls closer.
"Really this year, invest a number of resources around an attendance push within communications, and within incentives for young people," Santelises said.
Dr. Santelises said, this year, there will be a renewed emphasis on core subjects.
"Really doubling down on math, we know that math is a challenging area for the country for the state and certainly for Baltimore City," Santelises said.
The CEO said school leaders are putting those efforts into action despite teacher shortages.
"We brought in national math folks to help us with that, and we had over 400 teachers come for math professional development on their own time," Santelises said. "They didn't have to do that."
There is also no hiding the challenges administrators face in and outside the classrooms.
"One of the things that families should feel hopeful about is that our focus on literacy is paying off," Santelises said. "We are seeing increased growth even through the pandemic in the literacy proficiency rates."
Dr. Santelises defended her more than 30 years of experience in education and confronting those critical of Baltimore City Public Schools' academic performance head-on.
"We are on an upward swing," she said. "It does not mean we are there, and anybody can read anything I've ever written or see anything I have ever said, anybody in this system will tell you, I am not built to be a low performer," Santelises said. "That is not my trajectory, that is not my resume, so i'm not saying we are finished with those low numbers. I'm not saying those aren't problematic but I am saying we have strengths, we can build on that. It's the numbers you choose to look at. Nobody is reporting our advanced placement numbers we increased year-over-year, even in a pandemic."
Dr. Santelises didn't hold back and doubled down on her record of showing up and doing the work.
"The work is not complete," she said. "I told principals I did not come in here to have only one quarter of the children in Baltimore City where they need to be in language. I visited every single school that had that 0 percent young people proficient coming out of a pandemic. I didn't ask anyone else in the system to do what I wasn't willing to do."
Another major priority for the mother of three is safety within the school system.
"We are proud that we are working on a multi-pronged approach, so No. 1, we have increased staff to support schools and anti-bullying. We've heard from parents, yes, it's outside, but it's bullying inside of schools as well, so we have increased support with that. We're investing in very current high levels weapons detection,"
Dr. Santelises said she is proud of the work being done and acknowledging improvement.
"We have 31 new schools that will be on the docket that would have been completed," Santelises said, "We have palpably more arts programming, more sports programming."
"We have significantly reduced the number of 1-star schools. Now under the new system, we're going to have to get back to work and dig deeper and make sure that is still happening."
Even so, Dr. Santelises said the school system is ready to welcome roughly 80,000 students back to the classrooms.
"We're on the right track," Santelises saod. "We definitely have more places to go and further to go and we're not going to take the gas off."
