As school opened for a brand new year on Monday morning, students and staff from The Booker T. Washington Middle School for the Arts, which straddles the border of West Baltimore’s Madison Park and Upton neighborhoods, were honored by a visit from Mayor Brandon Scott and CEO of City Schools Sonja Santelises.
“My message to our young people and our families is to show up to school on time, every day,” said Mayor Scott from the school’s library. “We know that students' consistent attendance has a direct impact on academic performance, social emotional development and life outcomes.”
Chronic absenteeism, defined by the state of Maryland as when students miss 10% or more of the year, became a problem in Baltimore City schools and across the country during the pandemic and as of last year, still remains as an issue. Poor attendance was one of the contributing factors in low performance scores for city schools on the most recent Maryland School Report Card. The state report card gives 15 points to districts for attendance. For the 2021-2022 school year, city middle schoolers got 3 points and high schoolers got 1.5 on the report.
Last academic year, Booker T. Washington actually improved attendance by 13.3%, more than any other city school.
Principal Rashida Ford shared some of the secret sauce: relationship-building.
“Most times students show up because they're connected to somebody in the school. So our goal was to make sure that every kid that walks in this building is connected to someone,” she said.
Ford created a “Harry-Potter style” house system. She said that, “Their house is like their immediate family. They get so excited about it, we also have so many incentives that are based off of them achieving their goals: the short-term goals and the long-term goals”
But increasing attendance also takes a lot of hustle from school staff. “We're doing home visits, and we're going around, and we're door knocking. We can pick kids up and bring them to school,” Ford explained. “Some people just need that extra push, they need to see us at their door.”
Relationships have allowed staff to help identify problems, whether it be related to transportation, or broader systemic issues like poverty, that are preventing kids from getting to school, Ford said. But relationships can’t do everything, she says the city and state need to distribute school resources equitably.
Mayor Scott, a Democrat who is up for re-election next year, began the press conference on Monday morning at Booker T. Washington by touting his administration’s investments in education.
“I've doubled our investment into city schools up to 393 million this year, the largest investment in the history of our city,” said Scott as he kicked off the attendance challenge. Baltimore City was required to contribute an extra $79 million towards education for Fiscal Year 2024 as per requirements set forth by the Maryland Blueprint for Education.
Booker T. Washington Middle School is the first school to win the mayor’s attendance challenge; each quarter the school with the most improved attendance will get a cup and certificate hand-delivered by the mayor.
“We're thrilled that overall attendance across the district improved last year while chronic absenteeism declined. And we also know we still have far to go,” said Santelises, who added that she hopes the mayor’s challenge marks the start of a city-wide effort “to make sure that young people are in school on time.”
