Five officers from the Southeast District of the Baltimore City Police Department were “matched” as Big Brothers with five middle school students from Highlandtown Elementary/Middle #237 on Wednesday, March 9, 2016, kicking off a first-of-its-kind pilot project between the police department, Big Brothers – Big Sisters of the Greater Chesapeake, and Baltimore City Schools.
The students, drawn from grades 5 through 7, met their mentors for the first time during the kick-off. The event—held in the school’s library—gave the students and their parents a chance to meet and talk with the officers individually in order to begin to build relationships. In addition, the police department brought along what Captain George Clinedinst referred to as a “special surprise” for the students: the police helicopter landed in the schoolyard, accompanied by several police motorcycles, cruisers, and one of the department’s canine units. Students were given a chance to climb into the vehicles, talk to the helicopter pilots and quiz all of the other officers about their jobs.
Moving forward, the officers will meet with the students two or three times per month in the school building, engaging in homework support, sports, and other activities with the students. During the first full week of the partnership, three of the students had met with their Big Brother: one officer brought homemade lasagna for his student’s lunch, while another officer played his first chess match against his Little Brother, a member of the school’s chess team.
Highlandtown #237—a community that draws its students from the Highlandtown and Baltimore Highlands neighborhoods of Southeast Baltimore—is the first school in the city to host such a partnership. Yet as a public school operating under the Community Schools strategy in the city (a collaboration between the Mayor’s Office, the Family League, and dozens of local partner agencies), Highlandtown #237 is adept at leveraging outside partnerships to bring new and enriching opportunities to their students.
Highlandtown #237 partners with the Southeast Community Development Corporation (CDC) as its lead partner agency, hosting a Community School Coordinator employed by the Southeast CDC to build and sustain partnerships and increase enrichment and educational opportunities for students and their families.
The school also regularly hosts staff and representatives from a diverse list of partners, including the Girls Scouts of Central Maryland, the Living Classrooms Foundation, the Holistic Life Foundation, as well Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital. These partners provide leadership building and self-esteem classes, stress-reduction and mindfulness classes for parents, as well as literacy programming for students—important additional content in a school with over 770 students and very large classroom sizes.