Its amazing that schools are placed with other schools that arent necessarily compatible. For example, in recent news there is talk of putting another school into the building of Western High School (for a year or two). Why would you take the city's only blue ribbon school, and one of only six in the state, and change what obviously works? BCPSS is known for changing things that work and leaving things that do not (ie: the dance of the lemons). How does a small, successful school survive with a school with gang problems, violence everyday and students who do not want to act appropirately? I can think of 3 buildings off the top of my head that have that problem, and those are just high schools. The purpose of smaller schools was to create small learning communities. But 2, 3 or even four smaller learning communities makes a comprehensive high school!

Sara wrote "territorial spats among principals over such petty things as who controls keys to the building's closets"

PETTY?!?! Sorry for the caps -- I don't know how to use html for italics... no offense...

Anyone who has spent any real time inside the city schools (or any school for that matter, but especially here) knows how scarce resources are. Electronics and supplies are often safeguarded in closets. Secure testing materials which decide our fates are often locked in such closets. How on earth can protecting resources be seen as petty in a place where teachers pay an average of $800 per year on their own for paper, xerox copies, and other such luxuries for students?!?! And I am really, really sorry, but folks just are not as honest as they need to be, and if things are not locked up in a closet to which only one person has the key, they will disappear... unfortunately, I have seen it happen for the past 12 years, from the roughest elementary school on the westside to the best citywide high school...

This just points to the fact that there is a serious disconnect in what the public knows about how schools are run (and try to just survive). Sara, I admire what you try to do with your reporting, but I really think someone needs to pull a "Nellie Bly" and spend some real, extended, hands-on time inside these schools, seeing and reporting on school life on a daily basis, and then actually telling people what it's like -- then people might take to the streets and fight for their kids a bit more (alongside their awesome kids such as the ones in the Algebra Project).

And it will get worse -- those precious, valuable resources locked in closets are about to get more scarce -- those budgets we made for this year are about to be cut in the late winter or early spring, so things we thought we could buy this year probably won't be bought.

And North Ave is playing with the purchasing process (or they are still seriously inept -- which is worse?), making it as hard as possible to actually spend the money we allegedly have. Autonomy??? Give me a BREAK! We have our own budgets, but we are forced to buy from North Ave's approved vendor list from their approved website, K-12 Buy. And they are NOT the lowest prices or best selection, but hey! We have autonomy over our money, right?!?!

Here's an example: We have to purchase library books from K-12 Buy. I sent in an order, and a month after I submitted a purchase request, it was "lost" at North Ave in the approval process, and now I have to remake a list that was constructed online and took 3 weeks to research... AND the vendor doesn't even list books by author on the website!!! AND the purchases take 6 weeks to arrive, AND they arrive without barcodes (at least our last order did)... but that doesn't matter because we still don't have a real working library catalog with updated, easily accessible collections, as of the end of the calendar year...

But hey! All is well... Because people really have a clue as to what goes on inside our schools...