School Closings

 In April and May 2015, we fought alongside George Mitchell and the Park Heights community against the closing of a small neighborhood school called Langston Hughes Elementary. Langston Hughes was originally slated to close its doors, due to low enrollment, in 2017. BCPSD bumped up the closure to end of school year 2015. We argued that 180 students were being made to walk 1 mile across a busy main road and through a neighborhood they are not familiar with.

TDP along with Neighborhoods United Park Heights (NU-PH) and Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP) advocated for community control of Langston Hughes.  We fought for this because we had been studying the issue of school privatization and several of our fellows were eager to do pressing political work.

We saw the closing as part of a larger movement to close schools in lower income neighborhoods while at the same time investing in charters. TDP’s role focused on raising awareness about the issues through our first major forum called: "The Human Face of Policy" which featured school stories and videos produced by fellows and staff, with a feature video focused on the LHE battle.

Since this 2015 campaign, TDP has followed the issue of school closings, and their impact on students and communities. We have continued to advocate for a public study of the consequences of school closings. Watch this video for information. 

In 2022, as part of our weekly Podcast series, we interviewed the head of the Office of Facilities at the district office, and the head of the Office of New Initiatives to find out more about how and why schools are chosen for closure, the pressures that City Schools is under to reduce overall school facilities in line with a declining population, and what the results have been.