Students and teachers at Baltimore City College high school will relocate to the University of Baltimore campus in midtown while their building is undergoing renovation.
Baltimore City’s Board of School Commissioners voted 8 to 1 on Tuesday night to approve a three-year lease that will enable City College to occupy space at the University of Baltimore, from August 2025 to August 2028. The move will bring approximately 1,500 City College students to the midtown area, plus teachers and other staff.
Headed by City College alumnus and former Baltimore mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, the university offered to lease the space for $1 a year and contribute toward the cost of some utilities in the buildings it occupies. The school board was told the campus will need about $9.8 million worth of renovations to make it ready for the high school students, and the city will have to cover those costs.
More than 100 people, including Schmoke, City Council member Odette Ramos, and dozens of City College students and alumni, crowded into the school board hearing room on North Avenue for the three and a half-hour meeting, and many cheered when the vote was announced. Students wore clothes bearing City College logos, and some held up signs urging the school board to approve the move.
The school board initially considered using the former Thurgood Marshall Middle School at 5001 Sinclair Lane as “swing space” while City College is being renovated, but that option drew complaints because the building isn’t centrally located within the city and would need extensive upgrades to accommodate high school students.
The University of Baltimore emerged as an alternative last year after Schmoke offered to make two campus buildings available during the school day — the Academic Center and the William H. Thumel Sr. Business Center, both at the intersection of Charles Street and Mount Royal Avenue. Representatives for the university and the school board have been considering the offer for the past year.
Schmoke said after the meeting that he’s happy with the vote.
“I’m very pleased for the students,” he said. “They will have a wonderful opportunity and a great education experience during their three years at UB.”
“I’m thrilled about it,” Ramos said. “I think this is an awesome opportunity for our students and also an example of how being creative will make a difference” when schools are renovated and need swing space.
Brittany Howard, president of the Baltimore City College Alumni Association, said she believes the school board made the right decision. A 2003 graduate of City College and a 2021 graduate of UB’s Robert G. Merrick School of Business, she noted that City College already has a strong working relationship with UB, which allows City College students to take dual enrollment and advanced placement classes there.
“I’m ecstatic,” she said. “I’m happy that we can…continue this partnership [with UB]. I’m excited that our students will have this opportunity to be able to learn in a college environment…It’s the best solution, and it makes it even better because the president of UB is also an alumnus of Baltimore City College.”
City College’s building needs a lot of improvements, said Jacob Howard, a member of the City College Class of 1974 and five-time president of the alumni association. “Everybody thinks City gets everything, but [the current building] has been there since 1928 and only renovated once, in 1982.”
Before the vote, school system representatives told the commissioners that they weighed the pros and cons of the two sites before bringing the matter to the board.
Benefits of moving to the Thurgood Marshall property, they said, are that it has a “large grass area” where playing fields can be created and a large parking area for staff and students. Drawbacks are that its gym and cafeteria are sized for a middle school, not a high school; that it lacks a pool, and that it “feels like a space for younger students.” Administrators have calculated that the building would need $11.5 million worth of upgrades to get it ready for use by City College, and that figure doesn’t include the cost of installing air conditioning.
Benefits of moving to the UB campus, administrators said, included the availability of a “collegiate-sized gym,” “collegiate library,” and “lecture-style classrooms,” and the fact that it “feels like a space for older students.” Drawbacks include: the need to build a kitchen and more restrooms; the lack of playing fields, tennis courts and a pool, and the need to hold athletic competitions off-site.
Under the plan approved this week, UB’s campus will be renovated to accommodate City College students before they move in, at an estimated cost to the city of $9.8 million. The work includes: creation of 30 new classrooms, two science labs and 2 art classrooms ($6.5 million); provisions for “security and technology needs” ($787,404) and additional restrooms ($566,931). City College students and faculty will also be able to use a parking garage several blocks from the Academic Building.
Several City College students addressed the board, and all urged members to accept the university’s offer. They pointed to its central location within the city and accessibility to public transportation, saying it would take less time for most students to get there than to the Sinclair Lane location.
One student said she will be graduating before the move but it will take her younger sister much less time to get from home to the UB campus by public transportation than it would take to get to the former Thurgood Marshall school. She warned the commissioners that when students have to spend a long time getting to school, that can lead to higher rates of absenteeism.
Several speakers noted that moving to UB will give high school students exposure to a college-caliber learning environment, when the Thurgood Marshall building wouldn’t, and it would cost less to renovate space at UB than on Sinclair Lane. Others said the lease with UB could be a model for collaborations with other local colleges when other public schools are undergoing renovation.
The lone vote in opposition to the UB lease came from school board vice chair Shantell Roberts.
Roberts said she wasn’t opposed to the move but wanted the school system to have a comprehensive plan for other school relocations and security arrangements before it approves this one. She said she was “deeply troubled” by the “perception of inequity” that could be created by moving City College students to a college campus for three years when students at other schools don’t even have locks on classroom doors.
As a school board commissioner, she said, she has to think about all 164 public schools in the city’s portfolio.
“I don’t get to just focus on City College,” she said. “I am not anti the UB plan. I am in favor of a better plan for the system.”
But others said Schmoke’s offer was too good to pass up now.
“This is something that’s really important for us and something that should happen,” said commissioner Mujahid Muhammad. “Our students being able to have access to a college campus is an amazing opportunity.”
“We have to expand opportunity [for all schools] while not leaving opportunity on the table,” said CEO Sonja Santelies.
“It is important that we take advantage of those opportunities that we receive,” agreed commissioner Kwame Kenyatta-Bey. “This is an opportunity, and opportunities don’t knock all the time.”
