Good news for city schools

Today Mayor Dixon announced that she is reversing course on a proposed property tax cut, which will enable an extra $2 million to be allocated for youth programs for city students. The money is to be used to supplement social services in schools, and to encourage senior citizens to volunteer in the schools. Aside from questions about the wisdom of using volunteers to help stop violence in schools which were well described in a post by mathnerd, this is good news for schools that desperately need more funding for social services. Impressively, the news of increased funding for schools comes even as the city is bracing for funding issues related to the faltering economy.

It’s good to see that elected officials are looking at the long-term, and putting resources into places that could directly help students and schools. However, I’m forced to wonder if the money would have been found were it not for highly publicized incidents of violence in schools – specifically the teacher assault at Reginald F. Lewis. In fact, one of the people responsible for using this new funding allocation cited the media scrutiny that BCPSS is under as a reason why this proposal is important. Thought that might be a factor worth considering, these priorities are important all of the time, not just when ugly incidents get city schools in the news. If Baltimore wants to stay out of the news for incidents they’re going to have to invest the necessary resources to give students the services that they need. We need to shift to proactively addressing problems before they become embarrassing, rather than making hasty decisions after they already have. When the focus is off of BCPSS, and violence continues but stops getting press coverage, will elected officials still make the tough decisions that address the needs of students?