Turkey Donation for City Springs Food Drive

BCP received an anonymous donation of 40 turkeys for the City Springs Food Drive, which was organized by the AARP Experience Corps Team at City Springs Elementary/Middle School. Thank you to the anonymous donor, AARP Experience Corps and Child First Authority Community School Coordinator Simone Garrison for helping our families!

City Springs and Hampstead Hill Prevail in BUDL Tournament

Congratulations to the debate teams from City Springs Elementary/Middle School and Hampstead Hill Academy on their outstanding performance in the first Baltimore Urban Debate League Elementary/Middle School Tournament of the season! Here's how they did...

City Springs Elementary/Middle School
1st place Open - Dayonah Cabean and Darren Meredith
5th place Open - Breyana Wade and Sheaira Madden
7th place Open - Jordin Matthews and Kaye Marie Lumayog
2th place Elementary - Devin Bradford and Ronald Wingate
24th place Elementary - Anaya Purvis and August Baker
14th place Novice - Daijanae Stewart and Keyshawn DeBose

Hampstead Hill Academy
The HHA team placed 1st for the entire tournament. In the Elementary Division, Alden Edwards placed 19th in Individual Awards.

In the Novice Division, HHA had the following team awards:
12th Place: Angely Yupa and Michaela Kirk
10th Place: Jorge Castro and Shirley Garcia
6th Place: Austin Korycki and Gregory Rosario
5th Place: Ronnie Huggins and Alex Vasylyshyn
3rd Place: Sara Flores and Aaron Sutton and
1st Place: Brandon Castle and Anthony Sanchez.

In the Novice Division, HHA had the following Individual Awards:
17th Place: Jose Portillo
13th Place: Jorge Castro
11th Place: Alex Vasylyshyn
10th Place: Gregory Rosario
9th Place: Austin Korycki
8th Place: Sara Flores
7th Place: Brandon Castle
5th Place: Ronnie Huggins
2nd Place: Anthony Sanchez.

In the JV Division, HHA had the following Team Awards:
4th Place: Laura Brown and Ethan Franetovich.

In the JV Division, HHA had the following Individual Awards
7th Place: Laura Brown and
2nd Place: Ethan Franetovich.

New School Proposed in Canton

November, 2013

From: Matt Hornbeck, Principal

Voice Your Concern About a New School in Canton

---

There is reason for you to be concerned about last week’s recommendation to open a new 900 student prek-8 grade school in Canton. Our school community might be negatively impacted by a change to our attendance area and/or a change in our student enrollment. We don’t want to lose any of our families! Any reduction in enrollment could negatively impact our budget making it harder to provide a quality school for our students, and far less likely that we could expand our building as planned.

The recommendation was made to the City School Board of Commissioners by the Office of New Initiatives (ONI) at North Avenue one week ago today. Yesterday, two public comment meetings were announced. 

Our message to the City Schools Board of Commissioners is clear:

Do NOT vote for the recommendation for a new school in Canton without a detailed proposal and without more information. The Board can vote separately on whether or not to renew and/or relocate the Friendship Academy for Science and Technology (FAST). 

There are four opportunities for you to help:

1. Attend important community meetings in the next week to voice your concern as a community member. 
    a. Tomorrow, November 20th at 5:30 p.m. at the former Canton Middle at 801 S. Highland Avenue; and 
    b. Tuesday, November 26th at 7 p.m. at the Canton Community Association meeting at the corner of S. East Avenue and Dillon Street

2. Attend the City Schools Board Meeting Tuesday, December 10, 2013 at 6 p.m. (If you want to speak, sign-up begins one hour earlier at 5 p.m.). Ask the Board not to vote on the new school without more information!

3. E-mail your elected representatives to voice your concern: 
    a. James Kraft, City Councilman for the 1st District james.kraft@baltimorecity.gov
    b. Bill Ferguson, State Senator, 46th District bill.ferguson@senate.state.md.us 
    c. Pete Hammen, Delegate, 46th District peter.hammen@house.state.md.us 
    d. Brian McHale, Delegate, 46th District brian.mchale@house.state.md.us 
    e. Luke Clippinger, Delegate, 46th District luke.clippinger@house.state.md.us 

4. Sign the attached letter and return it to school tomorrow. We will take the letters to the Board of Commissioners.  

Inspire City Springs Students to Attend School Every Day

Business Volunteer Maryland's INSPIRE team, in partnership with City Springs Elementary/Middle School, Child First Authority and the Baltimore Curriculum Project, has launched a new initiative to inspire City Springs students to attend school every day.

The initiative includes educating students on the importance of attendance and incentivizing them with rewards such as raffle items and field trips.To establish the motivation model effectively, we need your support. Generous donations from caring people like you and organizations such as yours are what will help us in our endeavor to encourage kids to come to school regularly and on time.

If you donate today through our GiveCorps campaign you will receive $20 off dinner at Harbor East's new By Degrees Cafe.

To help us pay for field trips and other attendance incentives, donate online at:
https://givecorps.com/en/baltimore/projects/792-baltimore-curriculum-project-city-springs-attendance-incentive

To help us pay for attendance raffle prizes, donate online at:
https://givecorps.com/en/baltimore/projects/837-baltimore-curriculum-project-inspire-city-springs-students

On behalf of the students of City Springs Elementary/Middle School we thank you in advance for considering supporting our efforts to fight against truancy and chronic absenteeism. Let’s help keep our children in school!

Sincerely,

The City Springs Elementary/Middle School Community


About Business Volunteers' INSPIRE PRogram

Business Volunteers’ new INSPIRE  program partners with schools to  incentivize and educate students on the importance of attendance. The City Springs team of volunteers is led by Business Volunteers Maryland Manager of  Business Engagement Tom Caron.

Hampstead Hill and City Springs Take 1st and 2nd Place in Southeast Baseball League

Congratulations to Hampstead Hill Academy and City Springs Elementary/Middle School students on their outstanding performance in the 2013 Southeast Baseball League. Hampstead Hill Academy was the 2013 League Winner and City Springs Elementary/Middle School took second place.

In an effort to share his love for baseball with the community, Councilman Jim Kraft holds a Southeast Schools Baseball league for 4^th and 5^th grade students throughout the 1^st District. All the games are played in Patterson Park, and the league runs April – May.

We would like to thank Councilman Kraft for providing this wonderful opportunity for our students.

For more information visit: http://www.jimkraft.net/contact/get-involved/southeast-baseball-league/

Business Volunteers Maryland PENCIL Partnership Pairs M&T Bank with Hampstead Hill Academy

Last year Business Volunteers Maryland's PENCIL Affiliate Program matched Matthew Hornbeck, Principal of Hampstead Hill Academy, with Mohannad “Mo” Jishi, Commercial Banking Manager for Greater Baltimore at M&T Bank.

In the first year of their work together, Matthew and Mo focused on making sense of the school’s finances, and created a system that allowed Matthew and other members of the school’s leadership team to better manage the information they receive about revenues and expenses.
Specifically, Mo helped Matthew develop a “dashboard,” allowing Principal Hornbeck to assess the school’s financial health on a regular basis. This improved system laid the groundwork for the school to begin long-range planning activities.
Building on this first project area, Mo and Matthew are focusing their work during the 2012-13 academic year on creating a strategic planning process, through which the school, using financial and other information, can envision, consider and decide on opportunities that will increase student achievement.
- See more at: http://www.pencil.org/pencil-partnership-helps-baltimore-school-analyze-finances-to-support-long-range-planning/#sthash.rEwf2DtW.dpuf

Matthew and Mo focused on making sense of the school’s finances, and created a system that allowed Matthew and other members of the school’s leadership team to better manage the information they receive about revenues and expenses.

Specifically, Mo helped Matthew develop a “dashboard,” allowing Principal Hornbeck to assess the school’s financial health on a regular basis. This improved system laid the groundwork for the school to begin long-range planning activities.

We would like to thank Business Volunteers Maryland, Mr. Jishi, and M&T Bank for supporting Hampstead Hill Academy.

Read the full article at:
http://www.pencil.org/pencil-partnership-helps-baltimore-school-analyze-finances-to-support-long-range-planning/

In the first year of their work together, Matthew and Mo focused on making sense of the school’s finances, and created a system that allowed Matthew and other members of the school’s leadership team to better manage the information they receive about revenues and expenses.
Specifically, Mo helped Matthew develop a “dashboard,” allowing Principal Hornbeck to assess the school’s financial health on a regular basis. This improved system laid the groundwork for the school to begin long-range planning activities.
Building on this first project area, Mo and Matthew are focusing their work during the 2012-13 academic year on creating a strategic planning process, through which the school, using financial and other information, can envision, consider and decide on opportunities that will increase student achievement.
- See more at: http://www.pencil.org/pencil-partnership-helps-baltimore-school-analyze-finances-to-support-long-range-planning/#sthash.rEwf2DtW.dpuf

Business Volunteers Unlimited Maryland (BVU) manages a PENCIL Affiliate Program, BVU grasped this situation when they partnered Matthew Hornbeck, Principal of Hampstead Hill Academy, with Mohannad “Mo” Jishi, Commercial Banking Manager for Greater Baltimore at M&T Bank. - See more at: http://www.pencil.org/pencil-partnership-helps-baltimore-school-analyze-finances-to-support-long-range-planning/#sthash.rEwf2DtW.dpuf

BD Diagnostics Supports STEM at Wolfe Street Academy and other Baltimore Schools

Wolfe Street Academy's After-School STEM Class

We would like to thank BD Diagnostics for awarding Wolfe Street Academy a grant of $10,000 to support the school's participation in the new Baltimore Area STEM Collective. We would also like to thank Dr. Meredith Durmowicz, Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Stevenson University, and Steve Kaiser, President of Kaiser Associates, for including Wolfe Street Academy in the program.

Stevenson University and BD Diagnostics are creating the Baltimore Area STEM Collective, a program focused on promoting excellence in STEM education at the elementary school level. They will combine high quality professional development for elementary school teachers and the development of a professional learning community to encourage the sharing of best practices in STEM education, fostering students’ natural curiosity and interest in STEM fields.

Mayor Speaks at Wolfe Street Academy After-School Event

Yesterday the Family League of Baltimore and Maryland Hunger Solutions celebrated Lights On Afterschool at Wolfe Street Academy. The event featured an open house of Wolfe Street Academy’s after-school program in action and a speaking program with comments from Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Wolfe Street Academy Principal Mark Gaither, Family League President and CEO Jonathon Rondeau; Wolfe Street Director of Extended Students Services Kathy Stroup, Wolfe Street Academy student Makayla Moore, and Baltimore Curriculum Project President Laura Doherty.

Lights On Afterschool, a project of the Afterschool Alliance, is a national awareness event focusing on the good work of after-school programs and meals across the nation. As a provider of after-school programs in more than 40 schools in the city, Family League wants to highlight the important work done to give children access to after-school meals, enrichment programs and other activities.

Wolfe Street Academy's model After-School program is funded by a generous grant from the Family League of Baltimore, which was awarded to the Baltimore Curriculum Project. The program includes STEM, Robotics, Jazz Dance, Mexican Folkloric Dance, Chess, String Instruments, Soccer, Radio Broadcasting and other offerings.

Attendees at the Lights On Afterschool event included representatives from Advancing Community Schools in Baltimore, the Baltimore Curriculum Project, the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance, the Family League of Baltimore, The Food Research and Action Center, the Goldseker Foundation, Maryland Hunger Solutions, Maryland Out of School Time Network, the Park School of Baltimore, and the Social Work and Community Outreach Service of the UMD School of Social Work.

We would like to thank the Family League of Baltimore, Maryland Hunger Solutions, and Kathy Stroup for organizing this event. Thank you to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and City Councilman Carl Stokes for attending. Special thanks to the student volunteers from Wolfe Street Academy and the Park School of Baltimore for serving as ushers.

Book Bank Supports Home Literacy at Wolfe Street Academy

We would like to thank the Baltimore Reads Book Bank for delivering free books to our students at Wolfe Street Academy last week. Second Grade Teacher Melissa Anderson had this to say about the book distribution:

"The kids LOVED the books! The girls were really excited about the Junie B. Jones book and the boys loved Captain Underpants.  Both groups really REALLY liked the Magic Tree House books too!  When I told the kids that they got to keep the books, they acted like it was Christmas!!! I was really sweet."

Over the summer the Book Bank delivered 2,370 books to BCP schools through a program to help prevent summer learning loss.

This is the second school year that BCP schools are participating in a new program that helps build home libraries and encourages reading at home. We would like to thank Director of Book Bank Operations Mark Feiring for supporting our students.

For more information about the Book Bank visit: http://www.baltimorereads.org/book-bank.html

BCP Participates in Teach for America STO Conference

The Baltmore Curriculum Project was proud to participate in a community panel discussion at Teach for America's Fall Strategy, Talent & Operations (STO) Conference on November 6, 2013 at My Thai Restaurant.

BCP Executive Vice President Larry Schugam joined Elev8 Baltimore Education Organizer Roxanne Allen, Child First Organizer and Baltimore Education Coalition Co-Chair Jimmy Stuart, and Advocates for Children and Youth Education Policy Director David Beard for a discussion about their experience working on the 21st Century Schools Initiative through the Baltimore Education Coalition.

This year's STO conference provides a forum for participants to engage in foundational management training and to think with peers and Human Assets partners about their regions needs around management.

We would like to thank Teach for America for including BCP in this discussion.

About Teach for America (TFA)
TFA is a national teacher corps of college graduates and professionals who commit to teach for two years and raise student achievement in public schools.

For more information visit: http://www.teachforamerica.org/

Raising a Reader Supports Early Literacy in City Schools

City Springs Elementary/Middle School has been selected to participate in Raising A Reader (RAR), an early literacy and family engagement program serving pre-kindergarten and kindergarten families in Baltimore City Public Schools. This is Hampstead Hill Academy's second year in the program.

Funded by a grant from the United States Department of Education and other private partners, Raising A Reader and City Schools will serve over 12,000 children and families by December of 2013.

Raising A Reader provides parents with training in how to develop the habit of sharing books with their children. More than 100 high quality books are rotated into each child’s home on a weekly basis for families to practice regular book sharing. Families are also connected to the local library in order to sustain book borrowing and sharing practices.

We would like to thank Raising A Reader, Baltimore City Public Schools, and the U.S. Department of Education for providing this wonderful opportunity for our students.

About Raising A Reader

Raising A Reader is a national non-profit organization offering local agencies an evidence-based early literacy and parent engagement program that has demonstrated it can improve the reading readiness skills of children birth to age eight.

For more information visit: http://www.raisingareader.org

Planning for A Diverse Future?

By Jon McGill, Director of Academic Affairs, Baltimore Curriculum Project

Public schools in the United States are “woefully unprepared to deal with the fastest growing ethnic group” in the nation, according to Andrew Rotherham, writing in 2011 in Time magazine (1). That group, now 16% of our population, is Hispanic (the preferred term, over “Latino/Latina”) and by 2050, the percentage will have grown to more than 30%. In the short period from 2001 to 2008, the population of public schools has grown from 17% Hispanic to 21% and in many districts across the nation, including the entire state of Texas, Hispanic origin students make up more than 50% already. States like Virginia, North Carolina and some western states seem “to have been caught flat-footed” by this population boom, even though we have known the forecasts for decades.

The list of areas in which Hispanic populations are underserved in the United States is long, and in the educational field, it is perhaps predictable. English language teaching for non-native speakers continues to languish in terms of both instructional research and practical pedagogy; college admissions for Hispanic students is far behind both their white and African-American counterparts; access to pre-school education lags far behind all other groups and, according to an article in Educational Leadership* in February, 2010, Hispanic children are likely to be among the “poorest of the poor”. This portrait is further contextualized by information about the parents of school-age children in the Hispanic community, where parents are likely to be under-educated and have less access to health care and further educational opportunities. For example, only about 10% of Hispanic mothers have a college degree, as opposed to roughly one-third for “white” mothers. Hispanic children are also more likely to attend “hyper-segregated schools”, those that are 90-100% children of color. Given other national statistics, this means that Hispanic children have less in terms of facilities, resources and high quality teachers.

Luis C. Moll, writing in Language Arts magazine, as far back as 1988, pointed out that the educational problems facing Hispanic students are also the problems linked to class, race and social status generally in the United States. (3) His research testified to the effectiveness of particular instructional techniques and the provision of adequate resources as a way to improve the standards for Hispanic children. Other research, such as that provided by CREDE (Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence) in 2002, points out that education does not occur in a vacuum. (4)  There are socio-historical forces at play and there is also considerable diversity amongst and across the catch-all terminology of “Hispanic".  There is class difference, country of origin difference and economic background difference, all of which make it more difficult to offer solutions and programs. However, across these variations, educators continue to provide consistent advice as to what works with communities defined as “immigrant”, whether recently arrived or second/third generation. Of course, that term also covers arrivals from privileged economic and educational backgrounds, lured to the United States in order to take up prestigious jobs.  The group we are most concerned with is that much larger population that arrived here seeking a better life, a better education and a better chance of secure housing, health care and employment.

 There is another hurdle that we do not often discuss: immigrant communities compete with both African-American communities and the “white” world for increasingly scarce resources. While the research on Black male education is extensive, and the focus on providing better opportunities for the African-American community is decades old, the same cannot be said for Hispanic communities. The risk of an unhelpful competition amongst underserved groups for resources and the resultant tensions will not serve any community and certainly won’t improve overall educational standards across the country. We have to be able to provide a research and resource focus on every community that makes up the growing statistical group of those living in poverty, poverty of resources and poverty in terms of the opportunities to increase educational attainment.

What Works?

Both CREDE and the Pew Hispanic Center provide similar conclusions in terms of how best to improve the educational provisions for Hispanic students. English language teaching of a high caliber; the right level of resources, the right training for teachers, particularly those in ESOL categories, and perhaps most vital, a clear sense that our students from whatever backgrounds and national origins, can achieve and have a right to be provided with the circumstances in which success is more, not less, likely. Recently published statistics indicate some growth in both college admissions rates and high school graduations rates for Hispanic students and we need to find out what has promoted this growth. For both statistical reasons, and for the sake of our national sense of what is right and moral, we need to do more and better.

1. Rotherman, Andrew J. (2011). The Education Crisis No One Is Talking About. Time. Available: http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2070930,00.html
    
2. Gándara, Patricia. (2010). Special Topic / The Latino Education Crisis. Educational Leadership, 67 (5). Available: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb10/vol67/num05/The-Latino-Education-Crisis.aspx
   
3. Moll, L. C. (1988). Some key issue in teaching Latino students. Language Arts,
   65(5),465-472.
   
4. Padrón, Yolanda N., Waxman, Hersh C. & Rivera, Héctor H. (2002). Educating HIspanic Students: Obstacles and avenues to Improved academic achievement. Santa Cruz, California: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence. Available: http://www.cal.org/crede/pdfs/epr8.pdf