Abbottston Elementary safety patrol members Jordan Brown, Taleah Holman and Rishon Nesbit wore highlighter yellow patrol belts and donned smiles for the first day of school.

The trio said they joined the safety patrol team to help other kids navigate the building.

“Helping people is the best thing to do,” said Brown, who is entering fourth grade.

Beyond their fellow students and parents, the safety patrol team guided high profile guests such as Baltimore City Public School CEO and superintendent Sonja Santelises and Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott. They were flanked by members of Baltimore’s City Council, school board commissioners and Mohammed Choudhury, the state superintendent of schools.

Safety patrol team member Nisbet said that new students might be nervous but as long as he’s on duty students won’t get lost in the hallways and end up in the wrong classroom.

“I’m going to take them to the right place,” he said.

The safety patrol team concept is new at the elementary school and it aligns with many of the school system’s initiatives to “build community through quality relationships,” said Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools.

Beyond that, there’s a renewed emphasis on academic interventions to ensure students get sufficient support to succeed, she said.

This school year is the first time that the Kirwan Commission funding, which will infuse $3.8 billion over the next 10 years, is being used to improve education quality in public schools statewide.

The extra state money has been spent on more tutoring programs, reading intervention support, digital courses for high school students, but also music, arts and sports.

The overall goal is to improve student engagement so young people are interested in attending school.

“Those are the things that we know draw young people into school and frankly, keep them from being engaged in activity that is not productive,” Santelises said.