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This sign hung outside Bard Baltimore's first-year location at 1101 N. Wolfe Street in east Baltimore.

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Baltimore Sun article, February 22, 2019

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Baltimore Sun article, February 22, 2019

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The guidelines recommend simple steps such as modifying school forms to allow students to self-identify their preferred names and pronouns, and having teachers ask students privately how they want to be addressed in class.

Now, Baltimore is poised to take those protections a step further.

There is power in an explicit policy, proponents say.

"These protections have to be stronger than a suggestion," said Jabari Lyles, Baltimore's LGBTQ affairs liaison. "They have to be mandated."

The proposed policy comes at a vital time, supporters say. President Donald Trump's administration has time and again signaled its intent to roll back rights for transgender people.

"Kids feel unsafe and unseen. They feel like they are actively being erased," said Kimberly Mooney, Roland Park Elementary/Middle's Gay Straight Alliance adviser. The policy is "really needed right now. If the federal government won't protect them, we need to step up and do it ourselves."

But those who oppose such policies argue it could put students at risk. The question of which bathroom transgender students should use has sparked backlash across the country. A Frederick County family sued the school system after it passed its policy in 2017, citing safety and privacy issues.

Baltimore schools' draft sex-based discrimination policy includes provisions laying out a student's right to be "referred to by their preferred name and by the pronouns that correspond with their gender identity." Schools are directed to allow any transgender or gender non-conforming student to use the name and pronoun that reflects their identity, regardless of whether the child has changed their legal name.

It goes on to say that students would have access to facilities that correspond with their gender identity, including restrooms and locker rooms. Students who are uncomfortable using a gender-segregated facility would be provided a "safe non-stigmatizing alternative," it states. Under the policy, students cannot be required to use a private restroom.

The draft policy does not address gender-specific schools. It remains unclear what would happen if, for example, a transgender girl wanted to attend the female-only Western High School.

The full school board is scheduled to discuss the policy next month. A vote would come later.

"School districts are peeking out of the closet - pun intended - and saying, all right, I think we can go ahead and do this."

The draft document states that the prohibition of sex-based discrimination "extends to discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation and nonconformance to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity."

The policy also lays out the steps for reporting a grievance, along with how complaints will be investigated.

Patrick Harhai, a member of the mayor's commission on LGBTQ affairs, said passing the policy in Baltimore should be a simple choice.

"This policy helps many and harms none," he told the school board's policy committee last month. "Why would we stop short of creating an institutional climate that protects the ability of students to find acceptance?"

Harhai teaches an Introduction to Queer Studies class at Bard High School Early College, a public charter in West Baltimore. He assigned students to read the proposed sex-based discrimination policy as homework. During a lively discussion about what the policy might mean to them, the teenagers pushed back on some aspects. They wondered aloud: Will people actually report instances of discrimination? How will students know it exists?

"As a trans student," said 16-year-old Oliver Klapp, "I just want my peers to understand what's going on. ... People will come up and ask, 'Do you have a penis yet? How do you go to the bathroom?' I understand the curiosity, but that's not something that's appropriate to just go up and ask somebody."

Klapp said these remarks come often from classmates. His other gender-nonconforming classmates described confusion about pronouns, as well.

Klapp and the other students aren't sure a written policy will change much.

"Kids are going to be kids," said one. (The Sun does not identify minors without parental consent.)

The students said the draft policy also doesn't address other concerns about how LGBT kids are treated in school.

"They only talk about straight people sex in health class," another said.

Harhai agrees the draft policy isn't perfect. Still, this iteration of Baltimore's sex-based discrimination policy has been years in the making. It faced obstacles in 2017, when the district's legal team urged the school board to proceed slowly after their Frederick County counterparts were sued.

The lawsuit brought by an unnamed 15-year-old girl and her mother in August 2017 argued that Frederick's policy violated the teenager's right to bodily privacy. The suit, which decried the idea of children being forced to undress in front of members of the opposite sex, was later dropped.

Martha James-Hassan, the Baltimore school board's policy committee chair, said she hasn't heard much negative feedback on the policy. Society has gone through "profound" change in the last two years alone in terms of how transgender people are understood and accepted, she said.

Lyles said he's not sensing the same hesitation from the city's school board this time. School districts, he said, are looking to each other as guinea pigs on this issue.

"Does the world end or are we able to continue to run things? What we saw in Frederick was that there was a bogus lawsuit and then it was dropped and that's it," Lyles said. "School districts are peeking out of the closet - pun intended - and saying, all right, I think we can go ahead and do this."

Another Maryland school district also was sued recently, but for the opposite reason. A transgender high school student sued the Talbot County Board of Education after he says he was barred from using the boys' restroom and locker rooms. A judge ruled in March 2018 that Max Brennan - or any other transgender student - could not be barred from a sex-segregated space based on their gender identity.

It was a first-of-its-kind ruling in Maryland, and the district eventually settled with Brennan. He was given permanent access to restrooms, locker rooms and other school facilities designated for boys and men.

A recent study from the UCLA law school found there is no validity to claims that gender-identity protections lead to privacy or safety violations in bathrooms. Such incidents, the study found, remain exceedingly rare.

The stakes for school districts taking this kind of action remain high, advocates say. For it to be truly successful, Lyles and others say, the policy needs to be accompanied by meaningful training.

In Frederick, training on their policy is part of teachers' mandatory professional development. Everyone who interacts with students must know the standards, said Liz Barrett, a member of that county's board of education. That means ensuring that substitute teachers have updated rosters with students' preferred names, and that bus drivers and maintenance staff are also briefed on the policy's expectations.

"If a student is mis-gendered..., it's particularly hurtful," Barrett said.

About 45 percent of LGBTQ students felt unsafe at school because of their gender expression, and more than a third missed at least one day of school in the previous month because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable. Nearly a fifth of these students reported that they felt they had to change schools because of the negative experiences.

More than half of LGBTQ students who reported being harassed or assaulted in school did not tell staff. And 60 percent of students who did report an incident said school staff did nothing in response or told the student to ignore it.

Those victimized for their gender expression reported higher levels of depression and lower self-esteem. More than a third of transgender students, the CDC found recently, attempt suicide.

"This policy is life or death," Lyles said. "This policy is the difference between a student walking our hallways knowing they're affirmed and supported exactly as they are, or a student walking our hallways at all."

Recommended on Baltimore Sun

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Baltimore schools draft policy to protect transgender students - a step beyond most Maryland schools

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The guidelines recommend simple steps such as modifying school forms to allow students to self-identify their preferred names and pronouns, and having teachers ask students privately how they want to be addressed in class. Now, Baltimore is poised to take those protections a step further. There is power in an explicit policy, proponents say.

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Like thousands of high school seniors throughout the region, Anthony Lloyd is about to get his high school diploma. But when the 18-year-old Baltimore student walks across the stage Friday for the Bard High School Early College graduation ceremony, he'll also pick up another piece of paper that he figures could save him thousands of dollars: An associate's degree.

Lloyd is a member of the first graduating class of Bard High School Early College, a public school in West Baltimore that combines the four years of high school and the first two years of college in a single, four-year program.

"It definitely is a true blessing coming to me," he said. "College is really expensive, and anything to chip away at the cost is really good."

Bard, which opened two years ago, is both a public high school and an accredited community college. It offers its students the opportunity to earn an associate's degree tuition-free while earning their high school diploma.

The state's public colleges and universities have agreed to accept these college credits, meaning graduates will be able to transfer in as juniors - cutting the four-year tuition bill in half.

The school is the newest in a network of seven public schools in the country operating as satellite campuses of Bard College, the liberal arts school in upstate New York. It will graduate 44 students on Friday for a graduation rate of 94 percent - greater than the state rate of 87.6 percent, and much greater than the city rate of 70.6 percent.

High school students taking college-level courses is not new: They have been earning college credits in advanced placement courses and community college courses for years. But completing two years of college in place of the 11th and 12th grades is slowly gaining ground.

Baltimore County will offer an early college program next fall to 100 students entering ninth grade at Woodlawn High School. During the first two years of school, they will take up to one course per semester taught by faculty from the Community College of Baltimore County. In the last two years, they will take one class in the morning at Woodlawn and then travel 15 minutes by bus to CCBC in Catonsville for regular college classes.

Using a different model, the Hogan administration also is encouraging school systems to work with community colleges. It is helping to establish six Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools across the state.

Under the P-Tech program, school systems form partnerships with community colleges and local businesses. Students spend six years in a combined high school and college program working toward an associate's degree while also developing skills for specific careers.

Dunbar High School and Carver Vocational Technical High School started programs last fall. The initiative will expand to two schools in Prince George's County and one each in Western Maryland and on the Eastern Shore.

Carver, for example, is working with IBM to offer a degree focused on cybersecurity and information technology.

Educators say early college programs are particularly effective for low-income students, who are typically underrepresented among the college-bound population.

The American Institutes for Research reported in 2013 that students enrolled in early college high schools were more likely to graduate from high school and college.

Gail Sunderman is director of the Maryland Equity Project at the University of Maryland College of Education. In a report for the Abell Foundation, she wrote that too few students have access to early college programs. Eleven percent of seniors in the state were taking college classes in the 2014-2015 school year.

The Baltimore County program will offer students the opportunity to earn an associate's degree, but students can go at their own pace and earn college credits without getting the degree.

"We are really not going to push a kid," said Georgina Aye, Woodlawn's principal. "If a kid needs half high school classes and half college classes, we are still helping toward that goal."

She said students should not be pushed to the point of frustration. School administrators understand they need academic support, she said.

"The biggest challenge is preparing 14-year-olds for the rigor of college," she said.

Francesca Gamber, the principal of Bard, said the volume and difficulty of the reading assignments is one of the biggest challenges for her students.

"We are going to give you Plato and Nietzsche," she said. "It is a radically different type and volume of reading."

Gamber said the first graduating class had a retention rate of 100 percent - no one decided the work was too hard and left.

Seventy-four percent of the students who started as 11th graders in the fall of 2015 will graduate with an associate's degree, according to school officials. Three students won't graduate, but plan to take classes this summer to get credits they are missing and graduate.

Bard students say they have valued the depth of the teaching.

Jahsol Drummond attended several schools before Bard, but says he never felt that he fit in. He says the focus at those schools was on memorizing material and taking tests.

He was uninspired and bored. He wanted to dig deeper into the subjects.

When he started at Bard, everything changed.

"The quality of education is genuinely better," the 11th grader said. The courses "are tailored so you genuinely learn, rather than just recite information."

Early college has also proved popular among parents.

Bard "is so wonderful that I keep thinking there is a catch," said Tracey Drummond, Jahsol's mother. "I am just thrilled. Our family needs that kind of support, and my son is working hard for it, so it is deserved."

Aubreigh Dehinbo, 16, an 11th grader at Bard, says she chose the school because she wanted to be prepared for higher education.

"I knew college was the only way to get out of my economic bracket," she said.

Bard is negotiating with some private colleges to accept the students' college credits. It has reached agreements with a few, including Goucher College.

The programs at Bard and Woodlawn have attracted middle- to high-achieving, low-income students for whom a four-year college could prove a challenge.

The principals say they provide substantial extra academic support, including after-school tutoring and courses in study skills. While students enrolled in the program usually aren't significantly behind academically, they might need a boost to prepare for college classes.

Some Bard students say they didn't have the grades to get into the top local high schools - Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Western High School, City College - whose graduates often go to four-year colleges.

Bard doesn't consider applicants' middle school grades for admission. It bases decisions solely on an essay and an interview.

There were 600 applicants for 165 seats in next year's ninth-grade class. Gambers says the school selected students who showed that that they wanted a challenge. Clara Haskell Bostein, the associate vice president of the Bard Early Colleges network of schools, says administrators look for students with curiosity, motivation and a desire to learn.

The Bard schools also attract top students looking to reduce college costs. The Baltimore school is sending graduates to schools as disparate as Baltimore City Community College and Stanford University.

Students say Bard's professors, who are state certified to teach high school, are key to making the classes work. The professors belong to the Baltimore Teachers Union and are compensated on the city teacher pay scale.

With a scarcity in jobs in academia, Bard had no trouble finding applicants for 14 teaching positions last year. The school received 450 applications, many of them from people with doctorates.

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early college bard college woodlawn high baltimore

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Baltimore's 'early college' high school lets students earn associate's degree

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Anthony Lloyd is about to get his high school diploma. But when the 18-year-old Baltimore student walks across the stage Friday for the Bard High School Early College graduation ceremony, he'll also pick up another piece of paper that he figures could save him thousands of dollars: An associate's degree.

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Bard High School Early College will open in Baltimore on Monday, offering students a first-of-its-kind opportunity: to graduate from a city high school with a free two-year degree.

Students graduate with a high school diploma, an associate of arts degree and up to 60 transferable college credits from Bard College, a 150-year-old private, liberal arts college based in upstate New York.

City schools CEO Gregory Thornton has called Bard's program a "transformative opportunity," and Gov. Larry Hogan has praised the school program for "outside-of-the-box thinking we need to ensure all children receive a world-class education."

That program is part of a national network and includes college-preparatory courses such as physics and Chinese that segue into two years of college-level seminars in such subjects as algebra and literature.

Bard is a "contract school," which is similar to a charter school but means it has the freedom to tailor its program to have 50 percent of its enrollment be first-generation college students.

The city begins its academic year Monday. Other new city schools include three charter schools, Banneker Blake Academy, a middle school for boys; Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson Charter School, an all-female middle school; and Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys, an elementary/middle school.

Bard's opening comes at a pivotal time. The state is implementing new curricula and exams aimed at improving college and career readiness, and two years ago the General Assembly passed legislation requiring school districts to offer opportunities and incentives for students to participate in college-level work during high school.

In the city, Thornton is leading a $40 million campaign to secure a national program that would provide college scholarships to every Baltimore high school graduate in the next two years.

Baltimore joins a handful of other areas, including Manhattan, Newark, N.J., and Cleveland, Ohio, in the Bard network.

The only similar initiatives in Maryland are an early college high school program at Prince George's Community College and a program called College Park Academy at the University of Maryland.

Bard is unique in that it's "offering college within the support framework of a high school," said Francesca Gamber, head of Bard Baltimore.

Gamber, a Baltimore native who attended Harvard University, developed a passion for increasing college access while volunteering at a high school in Boston. Finding that work more important to her than posting good grades at her Ivy League school, Gamber came home to Baltimore, where her career has included coordinating internships for students in a city high school.

At Bard Baltimore, Gamber will use her experience to guide her in welcoming the inaugural 165-student class of ninth- and 11th-graders. During a weeklong summer session in August of writing and talking, what Bard could offer them became clear.

"What we're offering students is a chance to be exactly who they are," Gamber said. "We're offering a chance to be in a school that encourages them to express themselves, that is confident in their abilities."

Students are accepted based on in-person interviews and a writing sample that could be a paragraph or a page long. Attendance and test scores are not a factor in admissions. Students stand out if they demonstrate curiosity and a determination to meet the school's rigorous standards.

As a result, Bard is drawing low-performing students who would often end up at the worst high schools, as well as those who would otherwise attend flagships such as Polytechnic Institute and City College. The school is also attracting private school students.

The admissions process is designed to capture students like Christopher Johnson, Gamber said.

The 11th-grader who skipped half of his sophomore year at W.E.B. DuBois High School because, he said, his hour-long classes there consisted of 10 minutes of instruction and 50 minutes of teachers trying to manage behavior.

Yet Johnson taught himself four languages - he began learning French by conversing with his African classmates. He researched Bard, prepared for his interview, and for the first time asked his mom to go school shopping.

"This is a 'We're here to learn' type deal," he said. "And not because the state mandated us to be."

Faculty members include career educators from University of Maryland College Park and those whose careers have only spanned one-year fellowships. Staff also includes graduates from other Bard schools.

Some have come from across the country to the trailer on North Wolfe Street, where the school will temporarily be housed this year. Mathematics professor Chris Tsai traveled from Oregon to teach at Bard.

"I like to teach, but I like to teach serious students," said Chris Tsai. "These kids, their minds are here."

For some students and parents, Bard is offering a fresh start.

Denita Watts, a Baltimore schools employee and Baltimore County mother, is allowing her daughter for the first time to attend a school in the city - the same city where Watts was nearly murdered, while pregnant, seven years ago. Watts is working on her own associate's degree, and aspires to earn it by the time her daughter does.

"I just want her to be better than me," Watts said, "and to make better decisions than I did - like going to college right away."

Makenzie Young, another 11th-grader, said her teachers seemed more worried her departure to Bard would hurt the school's honors program than happy she was advancing to a more rigorous program. That's when she knew Bard was for her.

"I don't want to be average," Makenzie said. "I don't want to be held back."

The same is true for 11th-grader Niara Ferguson, who said quirkiness and intellect made her a target for bullying at her previous high school.

"I really appreciate diversity," she said. "In so many places, I felt so out of place."

Faculty members also said they came to Bard in search of a more fulfilling experience.

Their application process includes two interviews and a model lesson that is conducted in front of administrators and students.

Patrick Oray wanted to offer city students the kind of education he received in Chicago, and the kind his private school students experienced at The Park School of Baltimore.

This month, as his new Bard students sat scribbling in notebooks during a "free-write" session, an exercise where they were encouraged to share their thoughts, Oray motioned toward the class.

"This," he said, "is what happens when people have money. But Bard has all of the benefits of a progressive, liberal arts education - for free-ninety-nine."

Bard will eventually expand to serve 500 students. Those who didn't make the cut this year are holding out hope more schools may embrace a similar model.

Denika Russell was among parents who sat nervously while their children interviewed with Bard staff at a local library this summer. Russell had vowed that she would home-school her daughter, a ninth-grader, before she sent her to a sub-par high school in the city.

Bard's rejection letter was the ninth Russell received by the end of July, when most of the best schools informed her there was no more space.

Russell eventually got her daughter into a school they both are happy with, though she hopes to supplement her daughter's education with extra-curricular programs to keep her on the college-track. Russell said her experience over the last few months underscored why she sought Bard in the first place.

"Bard felt outside of Baltimore City schools," Russell said. "The sad thing about our schools is that the ones that have high standards are becoming fewer and farther between. Something has to be done. These kids shouldn't be feeling there is only one place to get a good education."

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In Bard, Baltimore school officials hope to pave a free path to college

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Bard High School Early College will open in Baltimore on Monday, offering students a first-of-its-kind opportunity: to graduate from a city high school with a free two-year degree. Students graduate with a high school diploma, an associate of arts degree and up to 60 transferable college credits from Bard College, a 150-year-old private, liberal arts college based in upstate New York.

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Maryland Daily Record article, June 19, 2015

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Maryland Daily Record article, June 19, 2015

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Imagine graduating from high school with not only a diploma, but an associate's degree and two years of tuition-free college under your belt. That's what Bard High School Early College Baltimore, a new public school in Baltimore, will offer students when it opens this fall. In their first two years, students focus on high-school courses taught by ...

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Bard, city puts students on fast-track to college

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Imagine graduating from high school with not only a diploma, but an associate's degree and two years of tuition-free college under your belt. That's what Bard High School Early College Baltimore, a new public school in Baltimore, will offer students when it opens this fall.

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Ad, Baltimore City Paper

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Ad, Baltimore City Paper

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The opening of the school was celebrated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Pictured here, left to right, are Frankie Gamber; Bard College President Leon Botstein; and Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Gregory Thornton.

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An artifact from our earliest professional developments!