The $1.1. billion Baltimore school construction jackpot
A $ 1.1 billion pot of money is a pretty big draw. So at Tuesday's Design Conversation "planning for Excellence in Education K-12" the Wind-Up Space, the bar and venue for all of D center's "Design Conversations" was filled to the rafters with teachers, architects and anybody else interested in the future of Baltimore City Schools.
You may now ask yourself, where on earth the $1.1 billion would come from when we talk about an impoverished shrinking city and a school system performing worse than any other in the state?
The 10-year Plan includes vacating 26 buildings, substantially renovating or replacing 49 buildings, and renovating 87 buildings as well as construction 15 new or replacement facilities. No surprise, then, architects are interested!
"Schools for the 21st century"
In the Wind-Up space various school officials and educators answered questions of event organizer and AIA architect Jill Storm. There was a lot of talk about "21st century schools", "new ways of learning", "preparing kids for jobs that don't even exist yet" and also talk about the communities from which the kids hail. In a city that shrunk by 1/3 from nearly a million people, the school enrollment shrank to less than half of the peak enrollment of 193,000 students to just 84,000 now.
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