Last week, the Afro published a story about the Kirwan Commission’s decision to delay its much-anticipated report about equitable funding for Baltimore City schools, quoting Karen Webber, director of OSI-Baltimore’s Education and Youth Development program:
“In Baltimore City particularly, we have a crisis in our murder rate right now. Students who live in neighborhoods where the murders are occurring bring that trauma into the classroom with them,” Webber said. Baltimore homicides are up 13 percent this year, with 309 being recorded as of Nov. 21.
“Our district has not been made whole in terms of its public funding formula. We need the extra that is commensurate with a population that has suffered vicarious and direct trauma. We don’t have time to waste. Yes, we want to get it right, but we need to get it right now,” she said.