Farewell Sara. We are already missing you. I agree with others. Consider teaching. Or write for the school system. Don't we need a PR person? On the other hand, we need honest, investigative reporting on education issues. You will find the right path. Or it will find you.I am a great believer that all things happen for a reason and so often it takes patience until all is revealed.Dr Seuss says"Don't cry because it is over. Smile because it happened." Or something like that. Until we meet.....take care.

Sara,

God Bless, you are one of a kind in this business, the article you did for Nancy and I after our daughter (Deanna) tragic accident was a class and told the story we wanted people to know. I know there is a job waiting for you with your nameplate already printed. We need more reporters like you.
Stay in touch.

AFA
Anthony Bubba Green

A sad day for all.

See you at TeaVolve

See-- now that Sara is gone, the blogs will pretty much stop; so will the insightful reporting in Baltimore City.

No one will be minding the store from a fourth estate standpoint.

Looks like comments get posted about once every 24hr and blog posts about City School issues, might be once a week for all I know. I am very sad - probably why I was overly snarky on some of my comments since Sara announced her departure - sorry, I'll try to restrain my self in the future. Of course, I'm not to sure about future posts.

Man...this is depressing.

To the Baltimore Sun Powers to Be!! I am a subscriber! You need to keep us happy. I have linked oodles of folks to this blog. Baltimore City NEEDS this blog. It has a following. We are loyal, we are activists, we are subscribers, we are advertisers, we need you to report city education news on a daily basis and we need you to keep our blogs posted regularly so we can keep up the only honest,open dialogue on ed issues going! Please......figure out how to keep this blog vital! Thanks.

All:

My apologies for the delay in getting comments up. We normally are notified when a comment has been submitted, but for some reason that isn't happening right now. I'm working on getting this fixed, and in the meantime will do my best to ensure your comments get posted in a more timely manner so the debates and discussions can continue.

Please, don't despair.

Sorry Arin, I do despair. I appreciate you getting the comments up faster, but with one post on City Schools since Sara's departure the comments are starting to slow down. It's hard not to see a grim path. We'll head into summer and everything will slow down even more. And as school starts up a City School post every week or two. Then it won't be worth checking the blog for posts & comments multiple times a day. There's energy among the commentors, but only when it's sparked by frequent, thought-provoking posts.

Well Sara, It has come down to fashion shows, air conditioning and NIMBY's and so the blog dies!

The blog is dying bevcause the know-it-alls are more concerned with insults than issues. And you are so right@parent, we need news. God knows there is city news everyday! Last week in one school only there were contests, a science fair, a book fair, a school that recently became a MD Green school, student-led parent conferences, a famous author visit, and more. and,yes, we do let the news know! But is is not violence etc so no reporters.Do one of you regular bloggers want to start a city school blog?????

wise educator--point taken, maybe Sara should have had someone like you to help keep us up to date so we (know-it alls) will have something to gripe, explain, comment about.
There are no stories here of any kind to really comment on at the moment
I will continue to check and when I personally find out anything I will try to comment on it but I have slowed down myself even before
Sara left.
Have a good week

Calmity, I think wise educator was just asking for civility in our discussions. I am a new poster but have been reading and although I appreciate all the opinions, I feel at times some posters DO feel they know it all. Everyone posting has different experiences and so it is like a puzzle to put together to get the whole picture. As @WE says, most of us are looking for information and a good discussion without know-it-all-itis ,insults, etc. This a generality, not pointing at you.

@WE , are you still reading but not writing? I enjoyed your posts. They were a blend of personal narrative and information. Where is Bill, Simon,A a parent, Claude, IO, And others? We are ,for the most part, an informed ,caring group. Let's pull something together. Maybe one of the independent bloggers could set up a new city school blog?

Thanks for reading.

i do hope the Sun can save the Inside Ed for mainly city topics or regional topics when the relate because this was a great blog to try and understand the city schools.

@elisabeth -

Since you ask, I'm reading, but finding little worth commenting on. I'm missing finding out what happened in the last board meeting from a source that I thought was impartial. I am trying to remain hopeful (but not really succeeding) that baltimoresun.com is going to find someone who cares about City Schools to mind this blog and give us posts and approve our comments quickly. Hostile comments get me worked up, but don't keep me from commenting. Boring posts and waiting 48hrs for a comment to show up keep me from commenting.

On my blog (click on my name at the end of this post), I'm trying to spark some of the discussion that isn't happening here anymore. No luck so far.

In response to a letter of complaint, Sun management has asked for my patience. I don't have a lot, but I'll probably keep reading posts for a while.

@elisabeth -
Looks like my last comment got dropped, so I'll see if I can submit it again - I won't speak for anyone else, but I'm finding the lack of City School posts and the delay in posting comments is making it difficult to comment much these days.

I did send a letter to the Sun management saying that I thought this was killing this blog. I am also trying to start some discussion on my blog, but I haven't had any luck so far.

So, I still read the blog and I am commenting a little - I'm not too sure about a long term future.

When Sara was leaving she mentioned having frequent commentors write guest posts on this blog. I wonder why this hasn't come to fruition.

It's also the very end of the school year, so I think naturally posts would have slowed down anyway. Maybe the Sun will hire someone or find some way to make this blog viable again once the school year starts.