Baltimore’s public school district is going on a hiring spree while student enrollment plummets and test scores remain in the basement.
Baltimore City Public Schools inflated its number of employees by nearly 19% over the six years between 2018 and last year, according to Maryland State Department of Education data analyzed by Fox 45’s Project Baltimore, an investigative initiative on the city’s floundering schools.
The school district hired 1,714 more staffers while the number of students plummeted by 4,781 or 6%, the data show.
It wasn’t mostly teachers the district hired, either.
Over those six years, the district hired 992 more teachers, about a 15% increase, but it also hired 721 non-teaching staff such as administrators, a 28% increase, the analysis found.
Last school year, the Baltimore City school district had 10,874 employees for 75,811 students, about 6.9 students per staffer.
“This pattern reveals that the government school system has become more of a jobs program for adults than an education initiative for kids,” school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis told The Daily Wire.
DeAngelis noted that 40% of Baltimore high schools had zero students score proficient on the 2023 state math exam.
Meanwhile, Baltimore’s public school superintendent makes $479,672 a year, more than the president of the United States, DeAngelis pointed out.
“These failure factories don’t give a damn about the kids,” DeAngelis said. “These overpaid administrators are leeches that extract funding away from the classroom and the kids they’re supposed to serve. Baltimore needs real accountability from the bottom-up with school choice. Families must be able to vote with their feet to schools that work best for their kids. Only then will the school system cater to the needs of children and their families as opposed to the other way around.”
School choice critics often complain that failing inner city public schools are under-funded and simply need more resources to help low-income children thrive academically.
However, Baltimore spends far more per pupil than other large city school districts whose students perform better.
Baltimore City spends $18,272 tax dollars per student, according to last year’s census, Fox 45 reported.
Meanwhile, Albuquerque, New Mexico’s, school district spends $12,964 per pupil and the Austin, Texas, district spends $12,492. Both outperform Baltimore students in every category, such as 4th and 8th grade math and reading, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, called the “Nation’s Report Card.”
“City Schools has made targeted investments in hiring qualified staff — from classroom teachers and counselors to literacy coaches and early childhood educators,” the district said in a statement. “We know that students thrive when they are supported by caring adults, and when schools are fully staffed and resourced. There is more work to do, but make no mistake — progress is happening, and our students deserve recognition for it.”
