Edgewood Elementary School in West Baltimore will close at the end of the academic year because of dwindling attendance, the Baltimore City school board voted Tuesday night.
Edgewood Elementary in the Fairmount neighborhood has been the smallest school serving students in grades prekindergarten through five in City Schools for many years, according to the school district’s Annual Review Recommendations Report for 2024-25.
The school’s enrollment has dropped from 178 in the 2020-21 school year to a projected 134 next school year, according to Baltimore City Public Schools. Comparably, Edgewood Elementary had 327 students in 2006-07.
Students will be rezoned to either Gwynns Falls Elementary School or Windsor Hills Elementary/Middle School beginning in 2025-26. The Edgewood Elementary building would be taken over by the city in the summer.
The Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners closed the school in a 6-3 vote with chairman Robert Salley along with commissioners Emily Ames-Messinger, Andrew Coy, Ashley Esposito, Kwame’ Jamal Kenyatta-Bey and Stefan Redding-Lallinger, supporting the proposal. Commissioners Mujahid Muhammad, Khalilah Slater Harrington and Dylan Rooks were not in favor.
Ashiah Parker, vice chair of the school board, was not present at the meeting and did not vote.
“One of things that was made pretty clear from folks as we were visiting schools was that there is a desire to potentially reinvigorate and rethink and reimagine programming in that part of Baltimore,” Redding-Lallinger said at the meeting. “I want us as a board and as a district to take that seriously as well as to note there are some very special programs at Edgewood.”
The ability of the school to sustain student programming has been an ongoing concern for school officials. In addition, the school has needed supplemental funds to meet basic budget requirements in each year for the past several years.
“When schools rely on supplemental funds to meet basic requirements, they do not have the resources needed to provide rich and robust programming that students deserve and have access to at other schools,” the report says.
Despite its small size, the school hhad a strong performance on its most recent state standardized testing and currently has a three-star rating on the Maryland Report Card school performance metric. Edgewood Elementary houses four citywide special education programs serving students in early learning and elementary grades.
Nonetheless, the low enrollment was a deciding factor in the decision to close the school
“Because of its small number of students and declining enrollment over time, Edgewood Elementary School does not have sufficient enrollment for long-term sustainability over time,” school officials said in the report.
In addition, the board took action Tuesday on the future of two charter schools, public schools run by independent nonprofits, by revising previous recommendations.
Creative City Public Charter School in Northwest Baltimore was initially recommended to close at the end of this school year. However, the board revised that proposal and unanimously granted a three-year renewal with several conditions, including improved standardized test scores.
Southwest Baltimore Charter School in Pigtown will face major changes at the end of the year. The school will stay open with different management and have a traditional setting as opposed to a charter beginning in the fall, a decision made in another unanimous vote.
Southwest Baltimore Charter School was in the 26th percentile for fourth and fifth grade math, the 27th percentile for those grades in English language arts and the 23rd percentile for sixth-through-eighth-grade English language arts. The board found that Southwest Baltimore Charter was “not effective in student achievement,” board members ruled at the meeting.
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