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Baltimore City Schools CEO Sonja Santelises joined OSI-Baltimore Director Diana Morris at the University of Baltimore yesterday to announce the rollout of Dr. Santelises’ Blueprint for Success. Representatives for 55 schools that have been designated “intensive learning sites” attended the meeting. Among these schools are 15 where OSI-Baltimore will help implement restorative practices, 20 that […]

The OSI-Baltimore Community Fellows Strategic Advisory Group, a group of ten Fellows from the 20-year history of the Fellows program, gathered at Turf Valley Inn on Thursday and Friday to learn from each other and to devise strategies to increase collaboration and collective impact among the 190 Community Fellows. Among the learning opportunities was a […]

At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee in Annapolis Tuesday, judges and public defenders testified that a Court of Appeals ruling that went into effect in July has been successful at reducing the number of people held in jail because they can’t afford to pay bail. The Daily Record noted that Baltimore County State’s Attorney […]

The Baltimore Community Foundation (BCF) has named Shanaysha Sauls as its new CEO, replacing outgoing CEO Tom Wilcox, who led BCF since 2000. Sauls previously served as CEO of the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women and former chair of the Baltimore City school board. Open Society Institute-Baltimore worked closely with Sauls on reducing suspensions […]

The children attending Unified Efforts‘s week-long Winter Break Camp spent time at Clayworks in Mt Washington creating clay pots and painted tiles to raise money for the Burundi Project, which funds a full-time doctor for the Kamenge clinic in Burundi. The students worked with artist Sam Wallace to create the “table full of love.” The […]

The Maryland Daily Record reports today that the use of cash bail in Maryland has declined since a new Court of Appeals rule, asking courts to prioritize non-monetary conditions for pretrial release, went into effect in July: In the six months since Maryland’s retooled bail rule went into effect, nearly 60 percent of criminal defendants […]

Patrick Gaspard, the president of Open Society Foundations and former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, has made multiple media appearances over the past week to discuss the impact of President Trump’s racist and derogatory comments aimed at immigrants and the countries they left. On MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” (starting at the 1:10 mark), Gaspard, who is Haitian-American, […]

The application for Open Society Institute-Baltimore’s 2018 cohort of Community Fellows is now available. Complete the online application or download it here.  Applications are due by 5:00pm on Monday, March 5, 2018. Learn more about the Community Fellowships program, the 2017 cohort of Community Fellows, or see a list of all past Fellows. For those applying using […]

In response to allegations that the bail-bonds industry has illegally bribed Maryland lawmakers, the Coalition for a Safe and Justice Maryland held a press conference in Annapolis today urging legislators not to accept donations from the industry, to return 2017 donations, and to reject any legislation put forward or promoted by the industry. (Read the Sun’s […]