Baltimore City Public Schools' new CEO shares plan to improve one of Maryland's most challenged districts
Baltimore City Public Schools' new CEO Dr. Jermaine Dawson is preparing for the first day of school, which is just over a week away.
Dawson first met with students and teachers a little more than a month ago at a school in Mount Vernon. He now tells CBS News Baltimore he's been to dozens of schools in the district since he started the position on July 1.
"They want to feel safe in schools. That is something that I'm hearing from our young people and also from our educators as well," Dawson said.
School safety
Improving school safety for the system's 76,000 students is a top priority for Dawson. How will he do it?
"One, to put more focus on prevention. What I've seen is that we do a lot of work to support our young people, but it's after the fact. How do we support them on the front end to do restorative justice, how to self-regulate, how to interact with your peers, to bring in the student court councils and things of that nature to help to address these concerns before they bubble up and to get them back into the mainstream classroom," he sharedAs the former deputy superintendent of academic services at the School District of Philadelphia, Dawson worked to improve attendance and dropout rates. He plans to do the same in Baltimore, where the latest posted numbers show more than 7,700 suspensions during the school year.
Dawson calls the number concerning and says keeping students in classrooms requires providing support to teachers.
"We want to make sure that they feel a sense that they have control in their classrooms and that they are able to teach. But also, we've got to find a middle ground here, where we can be able to support the teachers being able to teach in the classroom, but also think about what's in the best interests of the child," Dawson said.
Math and English
The experienced leader knows one of the keys to advancing Baltimore City Public Schools is improving student proficiency. According to the district's website, only 8% of sixth through eighth graders are proficient in math.
"So, what we want to do is to make sure that we provide robust instruction on building foundational math skills as to the why of what is happening in the math at the foundational level, to give students what we call fluency in mathematics," Dawson stated.
The former math teacher is also concerned about English language arts. Just 33% of middle schoolers are proficient in English, which is well below the state average.
"What we're going to be working on at the foundational level is not only just the foundational skills, but we've got to also make sure that our students are comprehending what they're reading, even at the lower grades," Dawson said.
Tutoring and graduation rates
The district's new CEO wants to bring high-impact tutoring to schools to assist struggling students. That approach involves 30-to-45-minute sessions of tutoring at least three times a week.
He also acknowledges that only 71% of Baltimore City Public Schools students are graduating from high school, which compares to 86% of students graduating across the state.
His goal is to find better ways to support high school seniors and vulnerable students in lower grades.
