In 2017, I did some commentary on a couple of articles that covered my home town school maintenance troubles in Bowie, Maryland. The first is here. The Follow up is here.
Now there are a lot of AC units on the fritz in Maryland’s Public School System. This article covers Baltimore City and County schools. The problems are systemic throughout The Maryland Public School System. This is just the latest
A local news program covered the problem. I’ve provided a link to the coverage, below.
https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2018/09/05/schools-with-no-ac/
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The first three days back to school have either been canceled or cut short for the schools across Baltimore City and the county.
All this is because thousands of students would be burning up inside buildings with no air-conditioning.
Here they go again. The first 3 days of the school year cancelled or cut short. Sounds like the school year starting off good for the kids. Three fewer days they’ll have to spend in these dumps. Will there be makeup days? Let’s hope not.
73 schools with thousands of students are impacted. 10 schools in Baltimore County will not open for the third day in a row and in Baltimore City, more than 60 will close three hours early.
These problems are getting worse. They are widespread and with no new sources of revenue, they will continue.
School and state leaders are pointing at each other to fix the problem.
School leaders say they have a plan in place to fix the lack of AC, but Governor Larry Hogan says the money has been there so why hasn’t it already been done?
No surprises here right? We have a plan! Get ready for some politics!
So School leaders have a plan, and the Governor asks why it hasn’t been executed. We get the answer to that later.
And while they point fingers, parents had to show up at noon to wait for their kids to get out of school hours early
On what should be the second day of classes statewide, 10 schools in Baltimore County haven’t even opened their doors for the year.
I will call this an unintended benefit. For the Children.
Sending students home before the heat gets to be too much to handle in classrooms that don’t have air conditioning.
Now, the political blame game is heating up just as quickly as the school hallways.
Gov. Hogan focused his attention for the problem on local school leaders. He said they promised several buildings would have air conditioning by now, but they do not.
“In October of 2017, the Chief Operating Officer told us these projects were already completed. I have the transcripts of all of this right here. All of it was completely false, they didn’t do anything,” Hogan said.
Hogan said out of the record funding Baltimore received, the district returned $66 million in construction funds that could have been used to fix heating and cooling systems because projects did not meet deadlines.
“They’ve received three time the funding as any other jurisdiction,” Gov. Hogan said. “And they haven’t done so.”
Hogan says he’s handed out state funds to fix the ongoing AC problems in 28 Baltimore City schools, but it hasn’t happened. The city’s lead educator says it’s not enough money.
The Governor says the money was dispersed. The City’s “lead educator” says it wasn’t enough money. So the problems weren’t fixed.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Earlier this year, Schools CEO Sonja Santelises said she believed that $66 million was owed to the school system because they didn’t get the money on time. She also said Baltimore needs more money than other districts.
So here we have it. Hogan released the money, but 66 million was returned, because deadlines weren’t met. According to the CEO, the money wasn’t received in time to make the repairs. These administrators don’t know what a budget is. They cannot for the life of them imagine there should be priorities. They spend thousands and thousands on maintenance reports that judge a school to be adequate, when that school has no AC. This has gone on for years and years. People react to this with outrage, as if it were out of the ordinary.
The economic description of this situation is “throwing good money after bad”. They’re arguing over who’s responsible for the compounded incompetence and mistakes made trying to fund and maintain these dilapidated school buildings.
“We have a plan we’ve submitted to the state, so we have year-by-year targets for schools that are not being renovated to have air conditioning,” Santelises said.
“The real question is, is one of the wealthiest states in the United States actually going to acknowledge the compounded years of underfunding,” She said.
Do you ever notice, the plan is always reliant on more money. The lack of creativity in their reasoning astounds me. They never talk about priorities. She speaks of “compounded years of under funding”. Don’t talk to me about a lack of funding. The only compounding is the compounded incompetence of School officials in charge of this stuff.
And while they do the red tape runaround, there’s no word on what it all means for students with the heat not looking to break anytime soon.
Baltimore County and City are not alone. The heat forced Prince George’s County to close schools two hours early.
“It’s a big inconvenience,” said Sierra Jones, a mother. “Absolutely. I’m like, ‘Who is going to take responsibility and actually take action?’”
You Mom. You. Pull the kids out, and put them in a safe environment where your world view is taught and the facility is maintained. At Home.
Parents are just barely beginning to come to the conclusion that Public Schools are incorrigible. Perhaps this mother will be the next to pull her child out of this failed system, and homeschool .