Welcome and Announcements
Lou and Committee members met with the B&O Railroad Museum on resources they are going to bring the community. They had a STEAM program that was used at Notre Dame Prep, are willing to share it with the schools in the neighborhood.
The Ingenuity project will move to James McHenry Elementary/Middle School
Lou would like to discuss how to make SW Baltimore a STEAM focused location
Lou had a follow up meeting with the ArchDiocese and they would be more than willing to help with connecting other STEAM resources (specifically Verizon). There is also a STEAM program at the SAFE Center
Jane B: James McHenry, George Washington and Catholic Charities are working on the Christmas Basket program
Keith: Heart Market has been implemented at Frederick—fresh produce and perishables are delivered and during the day the students shop for themselves, more than 50% were able to shop, need to account better for time of delivery and the amount of the food.
Sheila: has been working with Strong Schools Maryland on getting the Kirwan Commission recommendations voted into law. Two advocacy efforts that are most important are writing letters of support to the governor and members of the legislature. Strongschoolsmaryland.org has details about what the Kirwan Commission reports are. There are different buckets to the Commission’s recommendations: early childhood education, more resources for at risk youth, college and career readiness, resources for highly qualified teachers.
Jane would like there to be a consistent letter that people can send in support—Strong Schools Maryland has a draft letter. Elizabeth will send the Strong Schools letter out to the Education Committee.
Lou is concerned about having school districts manage community schools if the mandate that all schools are community schools goes forward
Jane M: withdrew St Luke’s from the Baltimore Education Coalition, not connected with BEC anymore
Isaiah: works for YearUp, trying to get a consistent present in the community gearing up for January session
Greg:
Camille: Christmas Store at Community Engagement Center in partnership with Foundry Church
Follow Up From Last Meeting
Singing to the Lions: experiential presentations are not necessarily the best for the Committee, needs to be better screening and interviewing of people giving the presentations, Greg would have liked to see it on a screen with children participating. Hannah: more control over the audience. Lou—important for programs to demonstrate why their program is worth seeing, define what’s unique about the program. Greg: suggested having a sub-committee that meets ahead of time who would be interested
Arch-Diocese: Elizabeth
School Updates
Hannah is doing the needs assessment at Southwest Baltimore Charter School
Kendal is developing a closet with ShareBaby, Keith suggested ShareBaby for parenting students at Vivien T, Hannah will connect Keith with Kendal. Hannah is trying to connect Vivien T to the BioPark
Steuart Hill parent room is together, organizing a parent group, Cub Scouts
Boy Scout Troop meets Monday, working with George Washington, meets at Transfiguration. Jane will connect with Elizabeth around connecting the Boy Scouts to Cub Scouts
Update: Principal’s Dinner with Anchor Institutions
The Committee is going to invite the principals to a meeting with the leadership of each of the neighborhood associations in January or February, will be hosted by Dr Perman at the B&O. Goal is to put faces to needs and resources.
Need Committee members to meet with principals to re-emphasize the invitation and to begin building a relationship.
Jane B will take George Washington/Bridget Wrightson, James McHenry
Hannah will take Southwest Baltimore Charter, Vivien T Thomas, Elizabeth will work with Hannah and Steuart Hill, ask them to hold the dates
Raising Funds for Community Schools:
Sub-Committee needed to work on fundraising plan—need to have a plan around crowdfunding.
Also need people with connections to institutions, individuals, and the private sector.
Will be a standing agenda item
Next Meeting
Elections will be next meeting (January 3rd)
Next meeting will discuss more fully STEAM programming:
What would we like to see
What will the B&O be able to provide
Closing
What Ifs:
We could convince Lin Manuel Miranda to write a play based on Not in My Neighborhood set in SoWeBo
We had a representative from each school on the Committee
We identified someone from each school that had an interest in being part of the Committee and invited them to the dinner
We asked the principal to identify a representative from each school
Vivien T—could provide young people for childcare at the meeting
We had a representative from each neighborhood at the meeting
We identified teachers in the schools who live in the neighborhoods
We could get a list of graduating seniors who are need of next steps after high school
We incentivized the meetings
