Not Present or Accounted For: The Attendance Crisis in Baltimore Schools“Not Present or Accounted For": Part 9
The following is a transcript of Part 9 of the radio series “Not Present or Accounted For: The Attendance Crisis in Baltimore Schools,” which was supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute-Baltimore.
At 11 o’clock on a recent weekday morning, two teen-aged males strolled outside a café on Harford Road. Baltimore Police Lt. Col. Rick Hite shouted out: “Why aren’t you in school?”
It’s an urban checkpoint played out daily by Hite, who has worked with at-risk city youth for more than 20 years. He listed root causes for disengagement.
“In the city, because of the drugs or alcohol, AIDS epidemic, families have been split and splintered and they find themselves on their own, older youth in particular, often abandoned, left to ride subways and the light rail at night.”
Hite explained such vulnerabilities have led thousands of Baltimore’s youth to join gangs, which have a direct impact on school attendance.
Juvenile gangs exist in a majority of city schools, a 2006 report by the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council said. The report found more than 50 gangs exist city high schools with at least 500 members. Another 500 gang members are in city middle schools.
Hite has seen school gang recruitment first hand. He likened it to a pyramid scheme.
“The drug gangs look at young people in the categories between 10 and 18. They are the ages that are marketable. They have a peer group is larger, they have friends of their own age group, which is like a pyramid scheme. You have a 12-year-old who knows 12 12-year-olds, who knows 12 12-year-olds. When you get to be 18, it becomes an adult game. ”
Like a real-life episode of the HBO drama “The Wire,” set in Baltimore, Hite offered a streetwise history lesson about why drug lords have turned to school-age children and teens here to carry out their dirty work. Hite explained:
“Let’s face it, in the early days, the older men involved in organized crime, gambling and drugs were older men. And as the time went on, I think it was 1987, (McCullah) vs. United States brought about the Kingpin Statute, which actually put a glass ceiling in to the organized crime and drugs and older men recognized that they couldn’t do that hard time. Fifty-to-life was a long time. And they started recruiting younger people. We started seeing younger kids being lookouts on the corners and getting involved in the drug trade for the first time. Prior to that, there was an unwritten rule that you just didn’t include the kids in this kind of market.”
A recent collaboration between the Health Department and school system linked attendance problems to violence and youth homicide. Other data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows Baltimore’s violent death rate for juveniles was more than double the statewide rate.
The cost is more than emotional.
A report this month by the Maryland Public Policy Institute found Maryland dropouts reduce state tax revenues by 193-million dollars annually. On average, the state’s more than 393,000 dropouts earn 10-thousand dollars less each year than high school graduates. And they are twice as likely to be incarcerated.
Christopher Summers is president of the institute.
“This is a crisis, and having this number of children not in school and not even completing school, eventually there is a high economic cost to the city and the state.”
Darnell Rogers, said he has learned that the hard way. In foster care at age 11, Rogers dropped out of high school at 16. He’s now working toward a GED at an inner-city community center and hopes to go to trade school.
“The only thing I can tell young people is if you got the opportunity, go to school. Because it’s real hard out here if you don’t have that piece of paper which is your high school diploma or GED, it’s real hard out here to get a job, you know what I’m saying?”
With the city’s graduation rate a dismal 60 percent and the teen violent crime rate the highest in Maryland, there is clearly a lot of work yet to be done.
