Mayor Tours Barclay, Touts School Construction Initiative

Jenny Heinbaugh, principal at The Barclay School, said her school’s building is in need of new bathrooms and ceiling tiles that have been destroyed by rain seeping through the school’s roof.

“Certainly our ceiling tiles—due to rain leaking in—have fallen. Our bathrooms, although clean, are quite an eyesore, quite deplorable looking actually,” Heinbaugh said. 

On Tuesday she lead Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Dr. Andres Alonso on a tour of the school located in the Abell community. It was one of two schools the mayor toured to promote her plan to increase funding for school construction.

The mayor’s plan involves increasing the city’s bottle tax from 2-cents to 5-cents, as well as using 10 percent of revenues from the land lease for a slots casino in Baltimore to leverage $300 million in bonds for school construction.  

“My concern is putting revenue on the table so that we can continue to improve our school system,” Rawlings-Blake said following the tour. “Our grades are improving, graduation rates are improving, dropout rates are getting better. Our schools are better than they’ve been in years, and we need to make sure the buildings are as well.”

Both schools the mayor visited are located in the district of Councilman Carl Stokes. He is the chair of the City Council’s Taxation, Finance and Economic Development Committee. The committee will hold a hearing on the mayor’s bottle tax hike proposal.

David Brown, an aide to Stokes, said the Councilman has been focused on helping the family of 13-year-old Monae Turnage who was shot and killed in Darley Park neighborhood on Saturday.

Brown said Stokes would give the bill a hearing, but it’s the chairman’s prerogative when that will happen.

Ian Brennan, a spokesman for Rawlings-Blake denied the administration was trying to send a message to Stokes by highlighting the conditions of schools in his district with the media in tow.

"The Mayor is committed to the Better Schools Initiative, and will visit schools in every district to highlight the need for renovations in schools throughout Baltimore," Brennan wrote in an email.

Following the tour, Alonso said that it’s critical for the future success of city schools to start making greater capital investments. He said the school system's current resources don’t allow it to systematically address the issues with buildings that are in some cases 70 or 80 years old.

“The kids are entitled, under the Constitution, to an adequate education. You know people talk about fairness, the Constitution, as far as I’m concerned, did not say you give to every county a piece,” Alonso said. “The constitution says you fund education so that it is adequate, and our kids are not sitting in adequate facilities right now.”

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