 | Topics: Youth & Religion (cross-referenced) Baltimore's Commonwealth of Schools Baltimoreans United for Leadership Development, or BUILD—the largest mainly black local organization in the country—has crafted an ambitious plan for revitalizing public schools, called the Baltimore Commonwealth. The plan combines a remarkable incentive plan for high school graduates with a strategy for wide-ranging devolution of power and responsibility to teachers and the community. Moreover, it represents a potent redefinition of the very function of schools, reviving the old tradition which saw education as the instrument of democracy itself, teaching young people to be full, active participants in the life and decision-making processes of their communities. Story and case study plus. Index Story: Baltimore's Commonwealth of Schools
Case Study Plus: Repairing the Commons Contents Story: Baltimore's Commonwealth of Schools Story: Baltimore's Commonwealth of Schools Story provided by Harry Boyte, coordinator of the American Civic Forum. Harry is also co-director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, Hubert Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota. Preface Baltimoreans United for Leadership Development, or BUILD—the largest mainly black local organization in the country—has crafted an ambitious plan for revitalizing public schools, called the Baltimore Commonwealth. The plan combines a remarkable incentive plan for high school graduates with a strategy for wide-ranging devolution of power and responsibility to teachers and the community. Moreover, it represents a potent redefinition of the very function of schools, reviving the old tradition which saw education as the instrument of democracy itself, teaching young people to be full, active participants in the life and decision-making processes of their communities. The Baltimore Commonwealth of schools, furthermore, renews the old concept of commons as meeting ground. In Baltimore, collaborative work on schools by BUILD, the business community, city officials, unions and others created a mechanism for an ongoing conversation about the city and its future, after a period of extreme division and polarization. BUILD's Commonwealth initiative has old antecedents. It stands as example of the prophetic role African Americans have regularly played in calling the country back to unrealized democratic promises. And the clout that BUILD assembled to press its plan constituted a reminder of the regenerative possibilities still to be realized in American politics. In the 1980s, after a period of decline, the schools once again became the centerpiece for a renewal of black community power in a fashion that held lessons for the nation as a whole. The program for change, the Baltimore Commonwealth, reflected a three fold combination: incentive plans for high school graduates of the sort sponsored by business groups around the country; the ideas of the Essential School Movement and other democratic school advocates; and the methods for a vast public "schooling in democracy" developed by the IAF. Story The 10th Anniversary Convention of Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development—BUILD—convened at 2:30 pm on a Sunday afternoon, November 8, 1987, in the Baltimore Palladium with more than 2,000 present. By 1987 Build's membership, still mainly black, was also increasingly diverse: it was made up of 42 churches (and was in the process of negotiating Jewish membership as well), including several white congregations; three labor unions (the Baltimore Teachers Union, the Community College Teachers Union and 1199E of the Hospital Workers); the association of school principles; and the public housing tenants group, Murphy Homes Improvement Association. The Palladium is a large public auditorium built in a style someone referred to as "Gothic Disneyland," with ramparts and towers, parapets, columns and hugh windows, a kind of hypermodern stained glass. Somehow the combination of old-fashioned design and hypermodern motifs fit the event—a testimony to the power BUILD accumulated in its first ten years through drawing on ancient religious and cultural roots of black Baltimore, and its future-oriented and entirely pragmatic view, that its real work was just beginning. Around the walls of the Palladium were balloons, banners, signs of individual churches: "St. Andrews BUILD—the Holy Spirit Makes Us One"; "St. Celia: Rejoice in the Lord," with a large dove; "Bethel AME, commemorating 200 years, 1787 - 1987: A liberating people. The motto is rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of God we will set up our banners," from Psalm 25. A huge banner in front proclaimed BUILD: for the 80's and 90's. A smaller sign nearby welcomed visiting delegations from I.A.F. affiliated groups around the country. Promptly at 2:30 Carol Reckling, BUILD president, called the meeting to order: "This is going to be a good day," she said. "What better way to mark our 10th anniversary than in our own traditions? We will struggle and celebrate and recommit ourselves." An opening prayer followed. Then an "accountability" roll call had each church, union and civic group announce the numbers of its members in attendance—numbers that would later be compared to prior commitments. Greetings followed from various political figures—Paul Sarbanes, U.S. Senator from Maryland, a short statement from AME Bishop John Hurst Adams, a member of the I.A.F. National Board, remarks from various I.A.F. projects around the country. Vera Valdiviez "representing 220,000 families of I.A.F. organizations in Southern California" described their "all out war to create a moral minimum wage" in that state. "We are pleased to be here to help celebrate ten years of rebuilding public life," she said. "The public life promised by our forefathers and so long denied to our fathers and mothers. We are proud to be your sisters and brothers on the other coast." The heart of the meeting was called "Empowering the BUILD Agenda," an exchange between BUILD leaders in the four key program areas—public housing, employment, education and neighborhood development—and public actors in the city. Their presence, more than anything said, made visible Build's power. Michael Middleton, Executive Vice President of the Maryland National Bank, spoke forcefully of the Greater Baltimore Committee's commitment to the school program, the Commonwealth. Leo Molinaro, Representative of the Rouse Company, one of the nation's largest builders, made a commitment to convene business executives to discuss with BUILD a new jobs program for unemployed adults. Mary Pat Clarke, the President-Elect of the City Council, and the Mayor-Elect Kurt Schmoke, both agreed to meet regularly with BUILD and in the coming months take the Baltimore city council as a whole up to look at the Nehemiah Project in New York. Schmoke, the first elected black mayor in Baltimore's history, had beaten the incumbent appointee of William Schaefer, "Du" Burns, after Schaefer had gone on to become governor. And Schmoke's campaign had been waged largely around "BUILD Agenda" issues that BUILD had declared as "its candidate," garnering in the process 75,000 signatures in support. "I heard a reporter say the other day 'I don't know which one of these guys will win,'" Schmoke recounted. "'But the real winner is the BUILD agenda.'" In a stirring symbolic gesture, Rev. Douglas Miles responded to the responses. He called for the Clarke, Sarbanes, the Congressmen in attendance, business executives, the school superintendent, foundation heads and Schomke to clasp their hands overhead. Together they pledged a "new covenant" for the future of Baltimore. Then, running somewhat late, the convention moved to a concluding "Prayer Service." Songs, scripture and prayers continued. And the Rev. Grady Yeargin brought the audience once again to its feet with an eloquent "message": "One day it will be said that in the city of Baltimore in the last quarter of the 20th century, strange and unusual things began to happen," he intoned. "Well-known somebodies with something from someplace began to meet with little known nobodies from noplace. The upper crust began to meet with the middle crust and with those who have no crust at all. It was a peculiar people. A strange and unusual coalition that negotiated and fought and worked together. "Then stranger things began to happen," he concluded. "Young men started putting down their guns and started picking up their shovels to rebuild the city. Young teenage women stopped going on welfare and started going to work. "Somehow the Kingdom will come on this earth. BUILD, if you are a mighty people, if you are a noble people, if you are a Great people, there's forests out there. There's land to be filled. There's work to be done. Won't you be counted in the army of the Lord?" The meeting ended with cheers and applause, singing and hugs. The representative of the Rouse Company—who purportedly had never visited the black community in Baltimore before and had been worried about the trip—kept shaking his head, saying he had never seen anything as wonderful. The event was undeniable testimony to Build's power. Particularly around the Commonwealth School agreement, centerpiece of BUILD organizing over the past several years, diverse elements of the city power structure made extensive commitments. By the next February, the Commonwealth—enthusiastically endorsed by Kurt Schmoke as the centerpiece of his own administration—had become the most wide-ranging school incentive plan for graduates in the country. Index Story: Baltimore's Commonwealth of Schools
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