How Baltimore Students Got Left in the Cold
“It’s axiomatic to say that Baltimore does not get enough money to maintain its aging school buildings. It’s true by definition: The city’s schools are falling apart. They’re the state’s oldest, and it really does take more money to keep old boilers running years past their replace-by dates. The price tag for fully upgrading the entire system’s facilities has been estimated at $2.8 billion. But there is another history to consider, one that has kept the city’s predominantly African-American student population shivering (or sweating) in their classrooms for a long time: a well-documented tradition of incompetence and corruption in school facilities management. And that’s a tradition that many urban school systems share.”