Life During Wartime: The Conditions of 83 percent black Baltimore City Public Schools... America's Most Dangerous School System

Eric "My People" Holder won't like this.

Not one bit.

Neither will Arne Duncan or Barack Obama.

Ever wonder why white people fled a school system like Baltimore City Public Schools?

An everyday reality when employed as a teacher in the 83 percent black Baltimore City Public School systems; and as the Baltimore Sun noted, a profound cost Baltimore's risk management office must factor into its yearly budget...

A school system completely run by blacks since the early-1980s (as you'll see soon, black political elites 'jealously' guard this control because it ensures the money flows into their pockets...).

Violence.


Black violence.

There is no school to prison pipeline;  just black individuals being punished for breaking rules protecting both their classmates and ensuring the safety of their teachers at a collective rate far, far beyond that of all other racial groups.

It's funny: Baltimore City Public Schools enrollment in 1923 was 83 percent white; 10 years later it was 77 percent white; it dropped to 71 percent white in 1943 and 62 percent white in 1953; by 1963, it was 43 percent white and by 1973 it was only 30 percent white. [Brown in Baltimore: School Desegregation and the Limits of Liberalism, Howell S. Baum, p. 225]

Today, Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) is 83 percent black and eight percent white; 84.5 percent come from low income families (based on eligibility for Free or Reduced-Price Meals).

Most importantly, the BCPS system is one of the most violent in all of America.[Student on teacher assaults on rise, ABC 2, 2-26-2013]:

BALTIMORE - We first showed you the most recent video in November; students at Digital Harbor High School in Federal Hill taunting, bullying, assaulting a substitute teacher at the front of the classroom.

Taken with a student's cell phone, the video pulls back the curtain on a bigger issue many simply don't want or won't talk about.

"It's just a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety.  Literally, I have to force myself out the door."

Baltimore city school teacher Jeffrey Slattery wants to talk about it because he still literally feels it.

It was December 2010 at Baltimore Community High School on the east side when he stopped a student without a hall pass.

The student got physical and Slattery let him go.

"He walked down the hallway, I turned around and went back to my classroom and he came up from behind me and once I was on the ground, he's basically standing on top of me.  He struck me multiple times.  When my jaw broke, I went unconscious and I don't remember anything after that."

The Social Studies teacher would later learn it took four other teachers to pull the student off him.

Slattery broke his jaw, it was wired shut for weeks.

He pressed charges and the student was convicted.

Slattery's assault by a student was just one of seven hundred that school year in Baltimore City Public Schools where its own data shows an average of four school personnel were assaulted each day in 2010.

ABC2 Investigators found that average holds true through the past five school years with a total of nearly four thousand assaults by students on personnel, with noticeable increases in the last two years.

Broken down by grade level, it is evident seventh, eighth and ninth graders commit the assaults more often.

[Do those numbers shock you?]  "No," responded the President of the Baltimore Teachers Union, "In fact, I am very surprised they are that low."

Marietta English says it was after an attack on city art teacher Jolita Berry in 2008 when assaults by students raced to the top of mind for most educators.

The story went national, fueled by the video posted to myspace back then.

Berry's story was the impetus for the union to start keeping its own records by imploring teachers to fill out a form reporting abuse; documentation to lobby for more support to stem this violent tide.

"They should not come to work fearing they will be attacked.  They should not come to work fearing they are going to be verbally abused.  This is not what we should be coming to work and face on a daily basis.  [ The reality of it is they do though?]  That's the reality of it, unfortunately yes," responded English.

 Just how violent is the 83 percent black school system (remember, it's been 70 percent black or more since 1973... that's forty-one years)? Just ask Baltimore's risk management office, which tracks assaults and attacks on the teachers in the 83 percent black school system. [Painful Lessons: Run-ins with students take toll on teachers, city finances, Baltimore Sun, 2-16-14]:

Jennifer Jones’ school day started with her standing in front of her class of third-graders at Harford Heights Elementary, and it ended with her flat on her back in the East Baltimore school’s hallway.

She lay there surrounded by colleagues and students at dismissal time, injured by a boy who grabbed her leg and pulled it out from under her. His resolute stare, she says, was as frightening as the assault on that day in January 2013.

Soon she was on a stretcher, headed to Johns Hopkins Hospital, hoping she would not be paralyzed.

Jones is one of hundreds of city educators whose violent and traumatic encounters with students have led them to seek — and often receive — compensation for mental and physical injuries, a Baltimore Sun investigation of workers’ compensation claims has found. Those claims provide a behind-the-scenes look at violence that is rarely documented in school system reports.

School employees report more injuries than those in any city agency except the Police Department. In the last fiscal year, more than 300 claims were related to assaults or run-ins with students — more than a third of the school system’s total claims.

And such claims are costly. School employees account for an estimated total of $4.6 million in medical bills and other costs related to workers’ compensation claims in that year, according to records obtained by The Sun in a Maryland Public Information Act request.

For officials in city government, the school system’s claims signal a troubling pattern of teachers being attacked or serving as buffers in fights.

For teachers like Jones — whose workers’ compensation payout will total an estimated $20,000 — the claims reflect a part of the job that leaves them feeling less like educators and more like punching bags.

“Every day it hurts like hell, and my life is forever changed,” said Jones, 31, who remains out of work and is fighting to obtain other benefits. “I can’t walk my dogs. I can’t do laundry. You eventually start to give up on the dishes. Every time I think about it now, I think the same thing when I was laying on the floor: Why?”

The school-related payments are a significant part of a large and growing expense for taxpayers, who foot the bill for workers’ compensation payments for medical bills, lost wages and permanent disabilities that can stretch for years.

In the last school year, the district logged 873 suspensions for physical attacks on staff — nearly triple the number of workers’ compensation claims labeled altercations and assaults.

“We know that’s not what teachers signed up for,” Edwards said. “They want to go into a school where they can be in a healthy, respectful environment, and we have an obligation to help them create that environment in our schools.”

‘Epidemic-like’ fighting

City government officials say that as they look for ways to trim workers’ compensation costs, they have urged the school system to help reduce expensive injuries — which usually result from educators breaking up fights, confronting disruptive students or being attacked.

Of the system’s anticipated $4.6 million bill for the last fiscal year, the city has paid out about $2 million so far for injuries that range from assaults to accidental falls. The largest single category: assaults and altercations. The city anticipates paying $1.4 million for claims in that category; it has already paid out about $615,000, records show.

Of the school district’s 866 workers’ compensation claims in the last fiscal year, 293 were labeled assaults or altercations, and eight were referred for criminal charges.

The highest award for a teacher injured in school was an estimated $192,793 for a man who reported that he fractured a leg while breaking up a fight between students; $44,822 of that claim has been paid, city records show.

About 45 more claims related to fights or interactions with students were listed in other categories; the city estimates that those claims will cost more than $270,000.

For instance, a fall that cost about $1,500 was summarized this way by a claimant: “Two students were fighting and they fell on teacher, and all fell on top of an overhead projector injuring [teacher’s] neck, shoulder, and upper back.” In an “overexertion” claim, for which the city has paid roughly $21,000 of an estimated $33,000, a teacher injured her knee breaking up two fighting students.

And such incidents can leave other scars. One teacher filed a claim for psychological stress after witnessing a student assault another; the city has paid $2,300 of an estimated $9,050 for it.

 Do you get why white parents don't want to send their children into these glorified daycare centers (the BCPS system); where a student population almost entirely dependent on the state for their existence has declared war on the teachers merely trying to occupy their time for a seven hours? [Baltimore Schools Among Most Dangerous In U.S., CBS Baltimore, 7-21-2011]

In many cases, the public schools in Baltimore are little more than prisons, with students forced to walk through metal detectors (some might be handheld by police officers), drug sniffing dogs, and full-time police presence [Minority pupils more likely to face metal detectors, Education Week, 8-29-2011]

Ask Baltimore city school teacher Jeffrey Slattery why all that might be necessary. He can talk now. His jaw is no longer wired shut.


No, the 83 percent black BCPS is nothing more than a war zone. And the blacks in charge of the system - enjoying the jobs this control ensures - have little regard for reform (the only way for reform to come is to bring up the white proportion of the overall enrollment).

Baltimore's first black mayor, Kurt Schmoke, spent years fighting and ultimately defending black political control (attempts to reform the system compromised black control...):

Kurt Schmoke's leadership in school affairs and his efforts toward reform were also constrained by the city's dominant political culture. In 1990, when interim superintendent Edward Andrews pressured several principals to resign, retire, or accept reassignment to a lesser post, Mayor Schmoke summoned him to city hall and asked him to back off. Schmoke cut short the city's experiment with private management after black church leaders and union officials, fearing the loss of jobs, mobilized to end it. Schmoke again wavered on the city-state partnership after other African-American leaders complained that he was relinquishing procurement contracts, employment opportunities, and other material reward accrued from black control of the school system. 

From birth in a hospital designated for African Americans to burial in a black cemetery, black Baltimoreans lived an almost entirely separate existence bounded on all sides by racial discrimination. The city is very much the product of a past that emphasized racial issues.

By the 1980s Baltimore had shed most of its southern orientation. Given a history of white domination and control, today's African-American leaders view recent gains, especially black administrative control of the school system, as long in coming. Past(p. 191-192, Marion Orr's Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore 1986- 1998]

In 21st century America, blacks are judged (always positively) by the color of their skin; as the pernicious influence of white privilege teachings shows, whites will also be judged negatively by both their character and the color of their skin.

There is no reforming this system; there is merely surviving this system until it inevitably collapses.

Blacks will continue to utilize resentment from the past to buttress their claims of both ignoring black dysfunction and defending programs that promote black interests; conversely, the continued refusal to admit the reality of black dysfunction only showcases why a pre-Brown vs. Board of Education world existed in America.

The pendulum will swing back to the future.