Students in the course Lectures on Health and Wellbeing in Baltimore, a Public Health Studies seminar coordinated by Philip Leaf, heard from Baltimore Public School System (BPSS) CEO Gregory E. Thornton in class on Tuesday in Remsen Hall.
Thornton’s lecture, entitled “The Way Forward: Delivering the Promise,” covered the challenges he has faced in his seven months as CEO. The Baltimore City Public School System has about 85,000 students — 57 percent of whom are eligible for free or reduced lunch — and 10,500 employees across 188 schools.
“Poverty is a major game changer,” Thornton said.
Thornton also said that there are over 2,500 homeless students, a number he expects to increase to 4,000 by the end of the year.
Despite this, Thornton also said that city high school graduation rates have increased from 61.5 percent in 2011 to 69.7 percent in 2014, and that the suspensions have dropped from 11,000 in 2011 to 7,500 in 2014.
City school enrollment is also increasing in the public schools.
“It’s a vital next step in order for our students to be competitive in the world,” Thornton said. “They have to have the skills that are necessary to navigate the world along with a good technical education. That’s our next frontier. It’s a priority of ours and a priority of the commissioner.”
Thornton emphasized that while there was major improvement in the school system, there was room for much more. He also stressed that his predecessors had made significant inroads into the problems facing city schools and thus refrained from taking credit for the positive statistics.
Thornton said he strongly believes that education is the way to make Baltimore safer and to revitalize the communities surrounding the schools.
“We have to focus on building the right staff, the right team,” Thornton said. “If you want to make a change, I believe the best way is to provide a quality education.”
Thornton stressed the need to create a technologically skilled student population in city public schools, but also noted that without funding it would be impossible to realize most of his dreams.
“We must maintain our sense of urgency,” Thornton said. “We owe Baltimore City’s children and our community nothing less. I have high expectations for the young people of the city.”
Thornton explained his three pillars of excellence: student achievement, effective and efficient operations and family and community engagement.
“The most important community to us is the parent community,” Thornton said.
He also added that keeping kids interested in school was a major challenge.
“A lot of my kids check out when they’re six,” he said.
He then pointed out a Hopkins student in the audience who had graduated from a Baltimore City public school.
“I don’t win unless I create ways that this young woman can be successful,” Thornton said.
The floor was then opened to questions from the audience. Audience members asked hard questions about the recent closings of public schools and charter schools.
“We have to build schools people want to go to. I don’t have a high school solution for charter schools,” he said.
Thornton said he recognizes the merits of the city’s 31 charter schools, which receive direct city funding, but ideally he would like to see all Baltimore City public schools be at the same level in elementary, middle and high schools.
Thornton was also asked about funding disparity between schools and prisons (an annual $14,000 and $32,000 per person, respectively).
“It’s a political mess we’re in,” Thornton said. “[Prisons] don’t rehabilitate.”
Students in the audience had strong reactions to Thornton’s talk.
“I’m tired of people running Baltimore City schools like a business,” Freshman Kwame Alston said. “People in Baltimore City schools have been known to hate and tear down success so we’ll just have to wait and see what he does at this point. I hope he can see past the numbers and really care about the students.”
Many students were impressed with the speaker.
“As a public health major, I think the class gives students a really great and unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the specific public health and wellbeing issues that Baltimore faces. It’s one thing to read about them in other public health classes, but it’s just a completely different thing to hear about them firsthand,” sophomore Sydney Gertzog said.
Leaf, the senior associate director of the Hopkins Urban Health Institute, will bring several more guest lecturers discussing the public health needs of Baltimore throughout the semester, including Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, Area Director of the Department of Juvenile Services Dwaine Johnson, and the Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen.
The lectures are open to all students, faculty and community members.
“The course really has two objectives. One is [given that] a lot of Hopkins students are involved in activities in Baltimore City — volunteering and doing research — to be able to provide an overview from the people themselves working in the city, people like Dr. Thornton, but we also have people doing community programs,” Leaf said. “People at Johns Hopkins are going to be the leaders in their community in the future, and a lot of people think that health is how good our health care services are, but there’s a lot more to it. The idea of the course is to show the diversity of assets needed in the community.”
