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BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Maryland officials have high hopes for a new statewide public boarding school set to open in fall 2008.
“I’m so excited we’ll be doing this,” Gov. Martin O’Malley said of the so-called SEED School of Maryland.
The state’s Board of Public Works approved on Wednesday a $55 million multi-year contract for the school, which will be open to disadvantaged students in grades six through 12.
The school will be based on a model from the SEED Foundation, a national education nonprofit. The foundation’s first school, the SEED School of Washington, D.C., launched in 1998 and has seen success. As of 2004, the school reported that 100 percent of its graduates were headed to four-year colleges such as Princeton, American and Georgetown universities and Boston College.
“It is a successful school with a successful track record,” said Bill Reinhard, spokesman for the Maryland State Department of Education.
The SEED philosophy is to take students out of distressed neighborhoods or turbulent homes but keep them nearby so they can interact with their families, said Carol Beck, director of new schools development for Maryland.
“The impetus for doing the board program is that there are students, particularly in urban areas, who are perfectly capable but who are facing obstacles,” Beck said.
The SEED School of Maryland was approved by the Maryland General Assembly in 2005, under the condition that it establish criteria to ensure the most needy students in Maryland are reached, Beck said.
The school will be based at the former Southwestern High School complex in Baltimore. It will enroll up to 80 sixth-graders in fall 2008 and then add a new grade each year until the school is at capacity, about 400 students.
Students from at-risk, disadvantaged families throughout Maryland will be able to apply for sixth-grade enrollment at the SEED School, expected to begin early next year.
Examiner Staff Writer Len Lazarick contributed to this report.
To Help
For more information about the SEED School of Maryland, e-mail Carol Beck at carol@seedfoundation.com.
mmcilroy@baltimoreexaminer.com
