The Baltimore Movement of Rank-and-file Educators (BMORE) and Caucus of Educators for Democracy and Equity (CEDE) organize in the interest of their members, who are educators, paraprofessionals, and other employees of the Baltimore City Public School system, as well as in the interest of the students they are serving. In response to the exposure of the freezing classrooms, BMORE created a list of demands that they sent to the school board and Dr. Sonja Santelisis, the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools (Baltimore Movement of Rank-and-File Educators , 2018). This list of demands was fashioned as a petition that received over 1500 signatures (Baltimore Movement of Rank-and-File Educators , 2018, p. 1). Their demands were:
- “BCPSS policy explicitly state that students in school will spend their class time ONLY in spaces designed for learning that are warmer than 60 degrees. Relocation is an option for individual classrooms ONLY if there is an unused space in the building which meets these criteria. If no such space exists, the entire building should be closed.
- Principals be empowered to take and report temperatures, with the authority to close their school if the facility does not meet the above policy. This would decrease the time students and staff spend in harsh conditions while waiting for a small group of people to visit a large number of facilities to make a final decision.
- The development of contingency plans with city government to provide students whose schools are closed access to warm meals, safe spaces, and other essential services.
- A specific communication plan be developed collaboratively with all stakeholders to keep families aware of emergency issues. Currently, it is up to principals to decide what, when and how to communicate with parents in case of an environmental or safety issue. There needs to be a uniform, and comprehensive system in place at the school and district levels.” (Baltimore Movement of Rank-and-File Educators , 2018)
Intersecting with the issue of the inequitable learning conditions in schools is the issue of school funding. Funding poses as not only an obstacle, but also a solution to the issue. Many of these inequitable learning conditions could be aided and, to some degree, solved by an increase in school funding. This would look like the dedication of funds to the rebuilding and repairing of school buildings and the addition of heating and cooling systems in the schools that need them. However, the lack of funding that is currently being placed into schools is leaving educators and the school board unable to solve the issue of inequitable learning conditions, but merely treat it. For instance, in Dr. Santelesis’ response letter to the demands list, she emphasized that it is difficult to solve problems involving some of the state’s oldest infrastructure without proper funds, which the state of Maryland refuses to give them. She calls it “systemic, multigenerational underfunding o facilities through inequities in the CIP funding process. (Santelises, 2019)” Additionally, BMORE, in their demands list, recognizes that the fault in this issue of inequities in learning conditions does not lie solely with the school board, indicating that there are bigger powers like the Maryland State Government, who can solve the issue.
Through the demands list created by BMORE as well as another petition that was created by CEDE, Dr. Santelesis agreed to enact a new procedure for responding to extreme weather conditions. This procedure established “60 degrees as the decision point for closing individual areas (such as specific classrooms) or the entire building,(Santelises, 2019)” as well as the use of electronic thermometers and other technology that all schools are now provided with such that they are able to quickly check the temperature of any area in a school building. While this does not tackle the larger problem of older infrastructure, it does force the school board to maintain, at the very least, a protocol that keeps students and teachers in adequate learning and teaching conditions.