(BALTIMORE – September 25, 2026) – I was minding my own business when I got word about the leadership of Baltimore’s two historically Black high schools. I had to stop and ask myself: Does the leadership of Baltimore City Public Schools know where it is?
Frederick Douglass and Paul Laurence Dunbar high schools carry the history of Black Baltimore. Before our children could walk through the doors of any high school they chose, these were institutions that educated them. Families fought for that education. Black educators poured themselves into those students. We cannot discuss who leads these schools as though that history is incidental.
Let me be plain: I do not want white principals in charge of Douglass and Dunbar. I want Black educators at the helm who understand what these schools mean to the communities that sustained them. Baltimore has people capable of doing that work. Why are they being passed over?
I have met the new schools CEO, Dr. Jermaine Dawson. When I learned he was a Morehouse man, I was excited. I thought he would understand why this matters. Dr. Dawson, the district owes the families and alumni of these schools an explanation. How were their leaders chosen? Whose voices were heard? What weight did you give to each school’s history?
And there is a larger question. Have you been to North and Poplar Grove? Have you spent time in Edmondson Village, Cherry Hill, Westport and Park Heights? Have you sat in homes and heard from parents before someone handed you a summary of their concerns? If you have, tell us what you learned. If you have not, start now.
A meeting on North Avenue cannot teach you a child’s entire day. It cannot show you what happens on the way to school, what a family is managing at home or why a parent might distrust the next official promising change. You have to go where the children live. You have to listen long enough for people to tell you the truth.
Baltimore has produced educators who know how to reach our children. I have long seen Dr. Andre Bundley as capable of leading this school system, and I have said so. My point is larger than one man: Baltimore has experienced educators who know our streets, families and schools. That knowledge is an asset. We should stop treating it as though it counts less than a résumé from somewhere else.
I remember the era of Dr. Andrés Alonso. Reporting at the time found that, several years into his tenure, 75 percent of the principals who had led schools when he arrived were gone. That figure does not tell us why each person left. It does tell us the scale of the change. I still ask what Baltimore lost when so many experienced school leaders departed. How much trust went with them? How many children lost an adult who knew their family before a problem ever reached the principal’s office?
I call some of those educators our big mamas. They knew your name. They expected you to learn. They called home, showed up and refused to give up on you. They held children accountable because they believed those children had a future. A district cannot replace that relationship with a new program and expect the same result.
I think about what happened to the name of George G. Kelson in Sandtown. His name was taken off the school building and replaced with Sandtown-Winchester Academy, without input from the Sandtown community. Kelson was a Black businessman who created jobs here. His name gave children a chance to ask who he was and what he built. Now they can walk past that building without ever knowing. The school board decided his name should come down; why were the people of Sandtown left out of that decision?
This is what I mean when I say a school system must know the people it serves. Names carry history. Educators carry relationships. Families carry memories of how this system treated them and their children. Ignore those things, and you will keep mistaking community distrust for a problem you can solve with a speech.
I do not want another leader to tell Baltimore children they are too difficult, too far behind or too damaged to reach. I want leaders who ask what those children need, set high expectations and give teachers the support to meet them. I want principals who know the history of the schools they lead. I want a CEO who can walk into a neighborhood, listen without a script and let what he hears change his decisions.
Dr. Dawson, this is your road map. Go to the homes. Walk the neighborhoods. Hear from the parents, students, alumni and educators who have spent their lives here. Then answer the questions about Douglass and Dunbar directly.
Our children are not an experiment. Their schools are not blank slates. Baltimore has given you a living history and a responsibility. Learn it. Honor it. Lead with love—and make that love visible in what you do.
