Parent on State of Schools in Baltimore City

Michael Boyd is a parent of children in two Baltimore City Public Schools, Matthew Henson Elementary and Harlem Park Middle School.

The State of Maryland has failed to address the abysmal conditions in Baltimore City schools, leading to classrooms without heat and students wearing winter coats while trying to learn. The reality is that Baltimore City schools have been chronically underfunded by the State for decades in both facilities and educational programs. This has created a situation of such serious racial disparities that Baltimore City students’ right to an education is in crisis.

In a letter to Governor Larry Hogan on behalf of concerned parents and families, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) expressed grave concern that that the State was not addressing either the massive gap between current and constitutionally-adequate educational funding or the immediate infrastructure needs of Baltimore City’s aging school buildings, which disproportionately harms students of color. The letter calls on the State to address this pivotal racial equity issue and ensure the State of Maryland fulfills its constitutional duty to students in Baltimore City.

(Video by Baltimore-based Six Point Pictures)

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TRANSCRIPT:

My name is Michael Boyd. My daughter Michaela is 7. She goes to Matthew Henson. Makai, he’s 3, goes to Matthew Henson. And Raquan is 14, he goes to Harlem Park Middle.

I feel as though the State don’t care about my kids. The physical building, it’s an old building. I don’t know what year it was built. But there’s been no renovations except for the elevator, probably 10 years ago. The boiler system is pretty much out of date. It’s cold in the building sometimes, in the wintertime. It’s hot in the summertime. When it’s hot in the building everybody drinks more water. Once the fountain, the little cooler runs out they have to wait for it to be replaced. And who knows how long that’s going to take because they only have one janitor in the building. Again, you’ve got one cooler on a floor with about 5 or 6 classes, so you figure 20 kids, 100 kids off one cooler.

Makai and Michaela both have asthma, and with asthma you know you ain’t supposed to be around carpet and the dust and stuff. And it’s a real problem because when the weather changes their asthma flares up even worse. They actually closed the school down a couple days, well almost a week, at the beginning of the school year because it was just too hot in the buildings for the kids to go.

To be in a cold building all the time is miserable. I mean the only thing you can think of is being cold. And that’s vice versa when it’s hot. When it’s hot all you can think of is being hot. No matter is the teacher, she could be doing something you like, but if you got you distracted. Once you distracted you can’t learn. Teachers buy air conditioners, they buy crayons, pencils. Some of them even have to buy their own paper because the resources are not there.

My godson goes to Harlem Park, Raquan. I went to Harlem Park, in 1976. The building is still the same on the inside as when I went there. That’s way over 20 years ago. And there’s no way in the world that building should still be the same. You got rats in the schools, mice, all kinds of stuff in these buildings now. Any time a building can be the same as when I went there twenty years ago, and my children have to go to the same building, in the same conditions, there is no justice in Baltimore City Public Schools.

It’s hard to believe that a place where you thought you was going to go to learn would actually cause you any kind of mental or physical harm. It’s supposed to be like a safe haven, somewhere you can go, learn, not have to worry about nothing. You there to learn. Being in school should be one of the best experiences for them, because you want the kids to learn. And they are our future leaders. So you want them to know as much as they can.

It matters to me because I love children. And I understand that the children are our future. And if you don’t supply our future with what they need now, we ain’t going to have a future. My message to the leaders of Maryland is that if you want to make Maryland great, then all the school districts should be the same. And if it’s one that you know is failing, or that needs more, then they should get more. Because across the board, everything should be even.