Archive

Positive Schools Center (PSC) of the University of Maryland School of Social Work, an initiative funded by a multi-year grant from Open Society Institute, recently created a series of training videos that they will use during the upcoming school year. The videos, which focus on leadership, positive relationships, teaching and learning, health and safety and school […]

PARCC test results released today show that Baltimore City Schools had the region’s biggest increases, even as suspension rates have plummeted. “These results debunk the myth that suspension reductions result in chaotic schools in which children can’t learn,” says Karen Webber, director of OSI-Baltimore’s Education and Youth Development program, which has made working with Baltimore City […]

Last week, 2016 OSI Community Fellow, Melissa Badeker and her program, Baltimore Teacher Supply Swap was featured on WMAR.  This time of year is especially busy for Badeker, who started the program with another fellow teacher as a way to collect unused school supplies from educators who no longer needed the materials and get them […]

As part of the Consent Decree that Baltimore City and the Department of Justice entered into as the result of an investigation into the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, the first set of the BPD’s revised policies relating to stops, searches, and arrests are available for public […]

This week Baltimore City Public Schools unveiled five newly-renovated school buildings under the 21st Century Schools program. With this initiative, the ACLU of Maryland, with help from OSI planning and implementation grants, worked tirelessly for years – along with Baltimore Education Coalition (another OSI-Baltimore grantee), BUILD, Strong City Baltimore and many other groups – advocating […]

This week, Baltimore Fishbowl reported on OSI-Baltimore’s grant to the Baltimore City Health Department to purchase testing strips that detect the presence of fentanyl in street-purchased drugs, distribute them at mobile syringe and needle exchanges, and study their effectiveness at reducing overdoses in the region. The Board of Estimates was scheduled to review the expense this […]

The Baltimore Book Festival is coming up September 28 to 30th, and Open Society Institute has been given the opportunity to curate an hour of programming on the main stage from 4 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 29th. The program will include a reading by Lady Brion (Brion Gill), a 2015 OSI Community Fellow, […]

This week, 2016 OSI Community Fellow Melissa Badeker was featured on WYPR’s On the Record, talking about how the Baltimore Teacher Supply Swap, the program she co-founded, has grown. The program is an exchange that provides much-needed school supplies to the educators who need them. As Badeker describes, the Swap gave away $20,000 worth of […]

Restorative Response Baltimore, an OSI-Baltimore grantee founded by 1998 OSI Community Fellow Lauren Abramson that offers conflict resolution and mediation, will hold its Summer Mix N Mingle event on August 25th. In addition to games, music provided by DJ Trillnatured, henna by Aayesha of Mehendi_Wali, and sweets by Kellz Kupcakes, the celebration will feature a […]

Yesterday, Mayor Jorge Marquez Perez from the Puerto Rican city of Maunabo visited Baltimore’s City Hall and met with Mayor Catherine Pugh as part of a mayoral exchange organized by Open Society Foundations. The program, launched in February, was created so that U.S. mayors could express solidarity and share expertise with their Puerto Rican counterparts as they […]