School-centered community development: Lessons from Baltimore’s 21^st century school buildings program

ABSTRACT

This article uses the case of Baltimore’s 21st Century School Buildings Program (21CSBP) to investigate the potential of leveraging a school facilities investment for community development. We find that school facilities investments have the potential to catalyze community development along four domains: social, institutional, economic, and physical. However, existing market conditions and community trust and social cohesion can facilitate or constrain whether and how schools catalyze community development. Leveraging school building investments for community development hinges on a clear vision and staff capacity for implementation. Finally, definitional, geographic, and jurisdictional divides between school districts and city agencies can complicate the potential for cross-sector connections at the neighborhood level. Our findings underscore the possibilities of school facilities investments and community schools for supporting community development and affirm the deep-seeded challenges that stakeholders face to work as collective stewards of a shared social agenda for school and neighborhood change.

KEYWORDS:

• Community based organizations
• neighborhoods
• community schools
• community development corporations
• public education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See (Bierbaum, et al. 2020) for full description of data and methods.

2. MVA classifies the neighborhoods within the Southwest INSPIRE area and adjacent as Type I and J. Median home prices were $16,508 and $9,249, respectively. Type I and J neighborhoods have among the highest percentage of vacant land and buildings, at 16% and 21%, respectively. Fewer than half of properties were owner-occupied.

3. Of the three schools, two will be fully operational during the 2023 and 2024 school years, respectively.

4. Within the quarter-mile radius of one Southeast school, MVA show B, C, E neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have high median home sales, ranging from $89,397 (E) to $223,970 (B). The neighborhoods around a second school include D neighborhoods, where median home sales are $102,989. The neighborhoods surrounding the third 21CSBP school in Southeast were categorized as B, E, and F neighborhoods, where the median home prices were $52,015. These neighborhoods have low building and land vacancies; one-third to half of all homes are owner-occupied.

5. The 2017 MVA categorized Cherry Hill’s neighborhood as Type G and H neighborhoods, which typically include median home prices that are below city-wide averages, at $20,000 (G) and $28,525 (H). These areas have low rates of owner-occupied properties; in Cherry Hill, estimates show owner-occupied housing rates ranging from 7% to 31% across Census tracts in the neighborhood.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Maryland Philanthropy Network, School-Centered Neighborhood Investment Initiative sub-committee.