The school district ranked 4th highest spending per student in the nation can't keep the heat on

[Axulus]

This seems like corruption and/or incompetence on a massive scale.

Baltimore City already spends $15,564 per pupil, the fourth highest per student out of the 100 largest school districts in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau

And yet they can't manage to keep the classrooms heated during the winter:

Photos spreading virally online showed children bundled up in Baltimore schools where heating systems weren't keeping up with the weather. The school system closed four schools and dismissed students early at two others Wednesday, and closed all schools Thursday as low temperatures persisted citywide.

Thursday's systemwide closures came only after parents and a teachers' union excoriated the school system for Wednesday's heating issues.

Criticism also came from former NFL linebacker Aaron Maybin, a Baltimore native who now teaches in the city. He says his first-aid kit thermometer showed it was 40 degrees in his classroom Wednesday at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School.

Maybin, the teacher and former NFL player, on Twitter asked people to donate to a GoFundMe page started by a Coppin State University student who says the funds will be used to buy space heaters for Baltimore teachers to use in their classrooms.

The student, Samierra Jones, told CNN the money also will be used to buy outerwear for Baltimore students. As of Thursday afternoon, the page had raised nearly $17,000 of Jones' $20,000 goal.

Santelises, in a statement to CNN, said Thursday that "too many of our buildings have outdated heating systems, poor insulation, and aging pipes as a result of years of inadequate funding for maintenance and facilities improvements."

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-cold/index.html

Inadaquate funding, or gross incompetence at managing the funds received?

What a joke that money has to be separately raised for space heaters and put into classrooms because the bloated school district administration can't manage something so simple on their own.

 

[zorq]

Eh, it sounds like it was a series of maintenance issues that cropped up at the same time. It's not necessarily gross budgetary incompetance. Sometimes these things happen even in well maintained systems.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

This seems like corruption and/or incompetence on a massive scale.

Baltimore City already spends $15,564 per pupil, the fourth highest per student out of the 100 largest school districts in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau

And yet they can't manage to keep the classrooms heated during the winter:

Photos spreading virally online showed children bundled up in Baltimore schools where heating systems weren't keeping up with the weather. The school system closed four schools and dismissed students early at two others Wednesday, and closed all schools Thursday as low temperatures persisted citywide.

Thursday's systemwide closures came only after parents and a teachers' union excoriated the school system for Wednesday's heating issues.

Criticism also came from former NFL linebacker Aaron Maybin, a Baltimore native who now teaches in the city. He says his first-aid kit thermometer showed it was 40 degrees in his classroom Wednesday at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School.

Maybin, the teacher and former NFL player, on Twitter asked people to donate to a GoFundMe page started by a Coppin State University student who says the funds will be used to buy space heaters for Baltimore teachers to use in their classrooms.

The student, Samierra Jones, told CNN the money also will be used to buy outerwear for Baltimore students. As of Thursday afternoon, the page had raised nearly $17,000 of Jones' $20,000 goal.

Santelises, in a statement to CNN, said Thursday that "too many of our buildings have outdated heating systems, poor insulation, and aging pipes as a result of years of inadequate funding for maintenance and facilities improvements."

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-cold/index.html

Inadaquate funding, or gross incompetence at managing the funds received?

What a joke that money has to be separately raised for space heaters and put into classrooms because the bloated school district administration can't manage something so simple on their own.

There's certainly some degree of incompetence involved (it's government), but also the tax base that funds the schools is not healthy, and the buildings are old.

Wednesday wasn't nearly as cold as it will be today in Baltimore (near-record low, with wind chill of 10 below zero), so I'm sure more schools will close.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Something to keep in mind: A good chunk of school spending is special education.

 

[Mumbles]

There are multiple factors at work here. First, it rarely stays this cold, for this long, in Maryland - this is actually the biggest problem they're dealing with. Second, it's pretty well known that many of Baltimore's schools aren't funded adequately as far as facilities go - particularly the ones in poorer parts of the city, many of which are also located at or near high contamination sites. Actually, a lot of the poorer schools don't even get the same school busses that the wealthier (and whiter) parts do, instead relying on Bmore's crappy public transit system*. And of course, this is simply an expensive area to do much of anything in - the teachers would rather not not live in poor areas, and so if you want anyone decent, you need to pay enough to compete with the suburbs - or at least, get as close as possible, which is generally not enough to match the suburban schools, as I understand (I could be wrong here).

* Incidentally, it was the police shutting down all public transit near a high school, and then shooting smoke grenades and rubber bullets at the kids who needed that transit to go home for "not going home", that kicked off the major riot during the day of Freddie Grey's funeral.

 

[Mumbles]

One major problem with the idea of shutting down the schools:

If you're reasonably wealthy, this can be a good option. Quite a few families rely on these schools to get food and heat for their kids. In many cases, there's simply no money around to heat the home in the middle of the day anyway. Now, this doesn't change anything - and there's also the usual grift, inefficiency, and incompetence that's common in Bmore government.

Truth is, I fully expect that Lowe's, various local businesses, and the like would have stepped up long ago, if these kids had been white...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Something to keep in mind: A good chunk of school spending is special education.

Something other to consider, Baltimore area is expensive. Now let's tackle a qualified statement in the OP:
"Baltimore City already spends $15,564 per pupil, the fourth highest per student out of the 100 largest school districts in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau"

Out of the 100 largest school districts. Why are we comparing them to that, and not overall? Such a thing makes the BS detector go off. The max I can find per pupil is on Long Island, about $60k per student.

As an FYI, the average per pupil for the top 1000 districts is about $10k.

And according to this, Baltimore is about 60th and funding per pupil seems to be quite common between $13k and $16k.

So now that we have established that the lavish funding per pupil isn't as lavish as implied by the OP, would the OP like to restate their concern?

 

[Toni]

Something to keep in mind: A good chunk of school spending is special education.

Point?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Something to keep in mind: A good chunk of school spending is special education.

Point?

I think LP was making a harmless reflection that Baltimore's spending per pupil could be higher due to a higher number of special kids.

 

[SimpleDon]

This seems like corruption and/or incompetence on a massive scale.

Baltimore City already spends $15,564 per pupil, the fourth highest per student out of the 100 largest school districts in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau

And yet they can't manage to keep the classrooms heated during the winter:

Photos spreading virally online showed children bundled up in Baltimore schools where heating systems weren't keeping up with the weather. The school system closed four schools and dismissed students early at two others Wednesday, and closed all schools Thursday as low temperatures persisted citywide.

Thursday's systemwide closures came only after parents and a teachers' union excoriated the school system for Wednesday's heating issues.

Criticism also came from former NFL linebacker Aaron Maybin, a Baltimore native who now teaches in the city. He says his first-aid kit thermometer showed it was 40 degrees in his classroom Wednesday at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School.

Maybin, the teacher and former NFL player, on Twitter asked people to donate to a GoFundMe page started by a Coppin State University student who says the funds will be used to buy space heaters for Baltimore teachers to use in their classrooms.

The student, Samierra Jones, told CNN the money also will be used to buy outerwear for Baltimore students. As of Thursday afternoon, the page had raised nearly $17,000 of Jones' $20,000 goal.

Santelises, in a statement to CNN, said Thursday that "too many of our buildings have outdated heating systems, poor insulation, and aging pipes as a result of years of inadequate funding for maintenance and facilities improvements."

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-cold/index.html

Inadaquate funding, or gross incompetence at managing the funds received?

What a joke that money has to be separately raised for space heaters and put into classrooms because the bloated school district administration can't manage something so simple on their own.

I think that you touched on many of the problems.

• bloated administration
• inadequate funding,
• misplaced spending priorities (dialed back from "gross incompetence")

Add these to the list, pointed out in the comments below and added to by me,

• the failure to maintain the school buildings and specifically the heating systems
• the failure to modernize the heating systems
• the erosion of the tax base
• the need to go to the voters to approve bond issues for even minor programs of capital investment to correct the infrastructure problems
• the no new taxes attitude among voters
• the widespread enmity against government
• spending for special education(?)
• the brutal nature of the rare weather

Probably the last has the most impact on the problem. The solution is obvious, cancel school until it is warmer.

 

[Mumbles]

This seems like corruption and/or incompetence on a massive scale.

Baltimore City already spends $15,564 per pupil, the fourth highest per student out of the 100 largest school districts in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau

And yet they can't manage to keep the classrooms heated during the winter:

Photos spreading virally online showed children bundled up in Baltimore schools where heating systems weren't keeping up with the weather. The school system closed four schools and dismissed students early at two others Wednesday, and closed all schools Thursday as low temperatures persisted citywide.

Thursday's systemwide closures came only after parents and a teachers' union excoriated the school system for Wednesday's heating issues.

Criticism also came from former NFL linebacker Aaron Maybin, a Baltimore native who now teaches in the city. He says his first-aid kit thermometer showed it was 40 degrees in his classroom Wednesday at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School.

Maybin, the teacher and former NFL player, on Twitter asked people to donate to a GoFundMe page started by a Coppin State University student who says the funds will be used to buy space heaters for Baltimore teachers to use in their classrooms.

The student, Samierra Jones, told CNN the money also will be used to buy outerwear for Baltimore students. As of Thursday afternoon, the page had raised nearly $17,000 of Jones' $20,000 goal.

Santelises, in a statement to CNN, said Thursday that "too many of our buildings have outdated heating systems, poor insulation, and aging pipes as a result of years of inadequate funding for maintenance and facilities improvements."

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-cold/index.html

Inadaquate funding, or gross incompetence at managing the funds received?

What a joke that money has to be separately raised for space heaters and put into classrooms because the bloated school district administration can't manage something so simple on their own.

I think that you touched on many of the problems.

• bloated administration
• inadequate funding,
• misplaced spending priorities (dialed back from "gross incompetence")

Add these to the list, pointed out in the comments below and added to by me,

• the failure to maintain the school buildings and specifically the heating systems
• the failure to modernize the heating systems
• the erosion of the tax base
• the need to go to the voters to approve bond issues for even minor programs of capital investment to correct the infrastructure problems
• the no new taxes attitude among voters
• the widespread enmity against government
• spending for special education(?)
• the brutal nature of the rare weather

Probably the last has the most impact on the problem. The solution is obvious, cancel school until it is warmer.

As I said before, that only means that kids sit home, alone, with no heat, *and* no food. Also, that sort of long break isn't much good for actually educating kids, and olny leads to more days in summer - when the buildings become far too hot instead. The actual solution is "maintain the damn schools", but that'd likely require a shakeup among administrators and politicians, as well as better state-level funding to even out the massive spending disparities between the city and nearby suburbs (trust, the schools where I live just south of Bmore are not having any such problem). And the modern GOP is of no help whatsoever, because, as I said before, they tend to be openly hostile to any spending on poor/urban/black people 0 and we're discussing all three here.

I'll belatedly state that Gov. Hogan *might* try to help, despite being a republican - he's shown some contempt for the dolt45-era GOP.

ETA: I'm not joking about summers. The only difference is that people don't have a visceral reaction to kids sweating in shorts and tshirts with maybe a fan in the corner - kids in a classroom in winter coats, gloves for shoveling snow, and so on gets the point across.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This seems like corruption and/or incompetence on a massive scale.

Baltimore City already spends $15,564 per pupil, the fourth highest per student out of the 100 largest school districts in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau

And yet they can't manage to keep the classrooms heated during the winter:

Photos spreading virally online showed children bundled up in Baltimore schools where heating systems weren't keeping up with the weather. The school system closed four schools and dismissed students early at two others Wednesday, and closed all schools Thursday as low temperatures persisted citywide.

Thursday's systemwide closures came only after parents and a teachers' union excoriated the school system for Wednesday's heating issues.

Criticism also came from former NFL linebacker Aaron Maybin, a Baltimore native who now teaches in the city. He says his first-aid kit thermometer showed it was 40 degrees in his classroom Wednesday at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School.

Maybin, the teacher and former NFL player, on Twitter asked people to donate to a GoFundMe page started by a Coppin State University student who says the funds will be used to buy space heaters for Baltimore teachers to use in their classrooms.

The student, Samierra Jones, told CNN the money also will be used to buy outerwear for Baltimore students. As of Thursday afternoon, the page had raised nearly $17,000 of Jones' $20,000 goal.

Santelises, in a statement to CNN, said Thursday that "too many of our buildings have outdated heating systems, poor insulation, and aging pipes as a result of years of inadequate funding for maintenance and facilities improvements."

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-cold/index.html

Inadaquate funding, or gross incompetence at managing the funds received?

What a joke that money has to be separately raised for space heaters and put into classrooms because the bloated school district administration can't manage something so simple on their own.

I think that you touched on many of the problems.

• bloated administration
• inadequate funding,
• misplaced spending priorities (dialed back from "gross incompetence")

Are there any footnotes to include with this? From my local experience, Akron ran into trouble because it had too many old schools for the shrunken population it has now. It needed to pass an income tax (or was it property?) hike to help pay for the demo'ing and removal, demo'ing and replacement, or building of a lot of schools.

 

[Mumbles]

I think that you touched on many of the problems.

• bloated administration
• inadequate funding,
• misplaced spending priorities (dialed back from "gross incompetence")

Are there any footnotes to include with this? From my local experience, Akron ran into trouble because it had too many old schools for the shrunken population it has now. It needed to pass an income tax (or was it property?) hike to help pay for the demo'ing and removal, demo'ing and replacement, or building of a lot of schools.

A biut of news from a person that lives nearby:

Governor Hogan has proposed both funding, and an investigator. Again, this man's stock is rising as far as I care. I'll also note that he's pushing to address cooling during hot weather, which is another problem I've discussed. But even so, a permanent fix is down the line.

Since a lot of schools are closed, The mayor told kids to go to rec centers to eat - except a lot of them don't have food, either. Some of the local activists are also helping out - I've heard as much from peopel associated with groups like 100 Black Men, black lives Matter Baltimore, and I'm told local churches are helping out, although these efforts almost never make it to the news (this is often true of local news across the US).

Bmore is *finally* working to address the breaking systems, drafty windows, and so forth, that people have been pointing to dor decades. Much like removing the Confederate statued that were littered across the city, they often only move when the spotlight is on them, or when they're threatened with action that they know *will* turn the spotlight on them. And they're running into problems regardless, since these buildings have been allowed to fall apart for a long time.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Something to keep in mind: A good chunk of school spending is special education.

Point?

I think LP was making a harmless reflection that Baltimore's spending per pupil could be higher due to a higher number of special kids.

Exactly. School budgets are difficult to compare because of the varying size of the special-ed budget.

 

[dismal]

I think LP was making a harmless reflection that Baltimore's spending per pupil could be higher due to a higher number of special kids.

Exactly. School budgets are difficult to compare because of the varying size of the special-ed budget.

Comparing to other school budgets is pointless. The relevant question is whether $15,000 per year per student provides enough revenue to heat a room for 25-30 students.

I'm gonna say the answer is "yes".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think LP was making a harmless reflection that Baltimore's spending per pupil could be higher due to a higher number of special kids.

Exactly. School budgets are difficult to compare because of the varying size of the special-ed budget.

Comparing to other school budgets is pointless. The relevant question is whether $15,000 per year per student provides enough revenue to heat a room for 25-30 students.

I'm gonna say the answer is "yes".

The basic problem is they skimp on maintenance to use the money for more interesting things.

 

[dismal]

Comparing to other school budgets is pointless. The relevant question is whether $15,000 per year per student provides enough revenue to heat a room for 25-30 students.

I'm gonna say the answer is "yes".

The basic problem is they skimp on maintenance to use the money for more interesting things.

Given if the rooms do not meet basic minimum habitability standards all those other things are worthless, that's what's known colloquially as a "fuck up".