Sonja Santelises, CEO, Baltimore City Schools Courtesy UVa
by James C. Sherlock
I try to keep up in the field of education.
That led me to read “Exploring New Frontiers for K-12 Systems Transformation” produced by the UVa Partnership for Leaders in Education (UVA-PLE), a long-existing joint project of the Darden School of Business and the School of Education and Human Development.
I read it hoping to see if perhaps Darden could rub some of the rougher edges off of the uber-progressive ed school and offer some good ideas.
Bad guess.
What I found instead would have passed for a satire on educational journals. Not the Bee could have published it. Only much shorter.
There she was, Sonja Santelises, on page 18 smiling out at me on an entire page titled “Expanding High Quality Learning: Baltimore City Schools.”
She has headed up that school district since 2016.
Those are the same Baltimore City Schools which:
- recently made national news by reporting that not a single student in any of 23 of its schools passed the Maryland version of the math SOLs. Not one. And 20 more had one or two students pass;
- were the subject of a 2021 story headlined “City student passes 3 classes in four years, ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA;”
- got caught in a major grade-changing scandal in 2020;
- caused a mother from the Baltimore projects, the parent of a 4th grader who could not read at all, to call on “someone, anyone to fix city schools; and
- had a high school in which 77% of those students tested read at an elementary level or below.
There is lots more, but you get the drift.
Mr. Jefferson’s University, perhaps dazzled by Ms. Santelises race, did not.
Bottom line. Baltimore City Schools is a contender for the worst school district in the entire United States.
Yet Ms. Santelises, who the city of Baltimore pays more that $445,000 for her leadership, was given an entire page to express her views on “Exploring New Frontiers for K-12 Systems Transformation.”
UVA-PLE has embarrassed itself. Those otherwise very bright people need to get a clue, or better researchers, or both.
On second thought, Not the Bee might have rejected that story.
Too absurd.
This column has been republished with permission from Bacon’s Rebellion.
Remember when “You couldn’t be able to make this stuff up” was considered a cliche? The effort to make UVA a national joke marches on….
Bachelors from Brown, Masters from Columbia, Doctorate from Harvard, what could possibly go wrong?
Anything to keep the temple on the hill from being torched
The Ryan Administration has paid for some ludicrous woke initiatives during his 5 years in office, but this may take the cake. I live in Baltimore and can attest that we have what is pretty undeniably the worst public school system in the US.
How on earth could the UVA Education School and Darden choose Baltimore as the paragon of K-12 “transformational” education? This is absolutely ludicrous, and yet another example of misspent expenditures under President Ryan.
You are so right about that!!!!!
And it odd that they would choose someone from a failing educational system.
The insanity continues. Recently the Charlottesville Board of Education reported that there was an altercation in the Charlottesville High School. This was only after most of the teachers elected not to come to school on the 20th. Initially, it was reported that the teachers were sick. Later that day a video of the “altercation” was posted on Facebook (See Charlottesville High School Fight) and it was obviously not an “altercation” but a full-blown riot involving over 60 students. (This was the 3rd incident of this type in 6 months.) It seems the principal did not retire for reasons of personal issues but because the high school is unsafe and the students are out of control. This was affirmed on Monday at a special meeting of interested parties when the “teacher panel” admitted that the teachers “walked” because the high school is unsafe. Now even the adults fear for their lives.
Now the University imports another educator, Sonja Santelises,
who offers herself as a solution when in fact she has a long history of failure. Sadly her ineptness resulted in persons of color being set back even further.
You can not make this stuff up. It is tragic and it is a FRAUD.
The only question is how BAD does it have to get before the BOV is energized to putting a stop to this madness.
Just more from the progressive bizarro world.
I live just outside of Baltimore City. A very high percentage of the children in the Baltimore public school system are reading at levels far below their present grade levels. The administrators are indifferent to the plight of these children.
DEI has totally defeated the Peter Principle.
That is totally bizarre. Trying to be nice here, maybe they are trying to get a foot in that door and fix the problem, without calling Baltimore schools out as the complete failure they are. Why they wouldn’t just go ahead and do that is beyond me.