Baltimore City College

Baltimore City College, known colloquially as City, City College, and B.C.C., is a college preparatory school with a liberal arts focus and selective admissions criteria located in Baltimore, Maryland. Opened in October 1839, B.C.C. is the third-oldest active public high school in the United States. City College is a public exam school and an International Baccalaureate World School at which students in the ninth and tenth grades participate in the IB Middle Years Programme while students in the eleventh and twelfth grades participate in the IB Diploma Programme. The school is situated on a hill-top campus located in the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore.Leonhart (1939), p. 120. The main campus building, a designated National Historic Landmark, is constructed of granite and limestone in a Collegiate Gothic architectural style and features a 200-foot-tall Gothic tower.

History

In response to increasing public pressure due to the changing needs of Baltimore's trade and commercial classes, political leaders introduced legislation establishing a high school. The resolution establishing the school was unanimously passed by the Baltimore City Council on March 7, 1839 and was signed into law by Mayor, Shepard C. Leakin. "The High School" opened with 46 pupils under the direction of Professor Nathan C. Brooks,(1809–1898), a locally-noted classical educator and poet, the first head of school of a new type of higher institution in Baltimore's developing public education system. "The High School" opened on October 20, 1839 and was initially housed in a rented building on Courtland Street (present-day Saint Paul Street/Place) "under the direction of Professor Nathan C. Brooks (1809–1898), a locally renowned Classics scholar. The school was housed at three different locations in its first three years of existence before returning to its original building on Courtland Street. The City Council in 1843 allocated $23,000 to acquire the nearby Assembly Rooms building at the northeast corner of East Fayette and Holliday Streets for the new school. The City Council in 1850 granted the Board of School Commissioners the right to confer graduates of the then-decade old high school with certificates of graduation, and the following year in the old Front Street Theatre, along the Jones Falls stream (between East Fayette and Lexington Streets), the school held its first commencement ceremony under the name of the "Central High School of Baltimore" with well-known influential civic citizen and lawyer Severn Teackle Wallis (1816–1894), as its first commencement speaker.

In the wake of an 1865 recommendation from the Baltimore City Public Schools Board of Commissioners, the City College began offering a five-year academic track, in an effort to elevate the school to the status of a baccalaureate degree-conferring college. On October 9, 1866, the City Council renamed the school Baltimore City College. The Council failed to take any further action and B.C.C. was never granted the power to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees. In 1873, a fire spread from the Holliday Street Theater to the Assembly Rooms forcing the City Council to allocate resources to build a new school building. The City Council acquired a lot on North Howard Street opposite West Centre Street and allocated $150,000 for the construction of the new building designed by Baltimore architect Edmund G. Lind and municipal architect George C. Frederick, who also designed the then-new Baltimore City Hall. The new building was constructed in an English Gothic revival style on Howard Street. The new City College building was dedicated on February 1, 1875. The school remained in its new building for just 17 years when it was undermined in 1892 by the construction of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad tunnel causing the structure to collapse. A new larger structure designed in the Romanesque Revival style by the noted local architects Baldwin & Pennington was erected on the same site. This new building quickly became overcrowded and an annex was established on 26th Street.

The school's enrollment increased significantly during World War I and alumni began organizing a campaign to build a larger building with campus grounds during the early 1920s. In 1926, ground was broken for a massive Collegiate Gothic stone structure designed by the architects Buckler and Fenhagen on "Collegian Hill". This new four-level structure dubbed "The Castle on the Hill" was designed to accommodate 2,500 students and cost almost $3 million, making it one of the most expensive school projects in America. The new school and grounds officially opened April 10, 1928. The main academic building featured arched windows, cornices, cloisters, gargoyles, stained glass, mahogany paneling, plaster arches, chandeliers, terra cotta tiles, and terrazzo floors with two courtyards and was designed to be expanded in the future with the addition of additional wings and buildings. Following the landmark Supreme Court ruling ''Brown v. Board of Education'' in May 1954, the school admitted its first Black students in September 1954 without incident. Two years later, the first Black faculty members in school history were assigned to B.C.C.Daneker (1988), p. 38. Enrollment at the City College reached a record high of nearly 4,000 students by the mid-1960s, then began to decline in the late-1960s to mid-1970s due, in part, to the opening of newer high schools in the city the suburbs of Baltimore County. In addition to contending with declining enrollment, the school's academic standards also began to decline during the 1970s. The school's once-prestigious A-Course academic track was discontinued in 1973 and a single academic track was offered. In 1978, at the urging of faculty and alumni, City College's landmark main academic building underwent its first-ever major renovations, requiring the school to temporarily relocate for two years. When the campus reopened, B.C.C. admitted female students for the first time in its then-139-year history following a controversial decision by the Baltimore City Public Schools to end City's long-standing tradition of single-sex education.

The school's academic decline continued into the 1980s until Principal Solomon Lausch in the early-1990s introduced a revamped curriculum, raised admissions standards, and secured increased funding and unique local autonomy from the Baltimore City School's Board of Commissioners. B.C.C.'s turn-around accelerated when Joseph Wilson, a former attorney, was hired in 1994 to lead the school following a nationwide search. Wilson strengthened academic standards by introducing the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program in September 1998. By the early-2000s, City College was once again routinely counted amount the nation's best high schools. The school was recognized at the start of the 1999-2000 academic year by the U.S. Department of Education as a National Blue Ribbon School.

Campus

Baltimore City College stands on an expansive, tree-shaded 38-acre (153,781 m²) hill-top campus in northeast Baltimore at the intersection of 33rd Street and the Alameda. The campus consists of two buildings: the Gothic-style edifice known locally as the "Castle on the Hill" which sits in the center of the campus, and the power plant building east of the castle. In addition to providing the building's utilities, the power plant originally housed five workshops: an electrical shop, a mechanical shop, a metal shop, a printing shop, and a wood shop. It currently houses the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello community corporation headquarters. Both buildings were designed by the architecture firm of Buckler and Fenhagen.

The castle features an iconic 150-foot-tall gothic central tower that is visible from many locations throughout Baltimore. South of the main academic building is George Petrides Stadium at Alumni Field, which serves as home to the school's athletic teams. During a major building renovation in 1978, a modern gymnasium was added to the southwest corner of the main building.

In June 2003, the current building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The listing of the building coincided with the structure's 75th anniversary. On April 24, 2007, the building was designated a Baltimore City landmark, which means that the building's exterior cannot be altered without approval of the city's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation. On June 21, 2007, the school's Alumni Association received a historic preservation award from Baltimore Heritage for its leadership role in preserving the building as an historic Baltimore landmark. In 2017, Architectural Digest named the school the most beautiful public high school in the state of Maryland.

B.C.C. Center for Teaching and Learning

City College launched in 2015 th
Torch Burning Bright campaign
a fundraising effort to modernize and rehab its library and student resource center. The $2.2 million project was designed by local firm JRS Architects and added new spaces for resource stacks; new areas for studying and reading; The Great Hall, a large communal space and reading room; new classrooms, seminar spaces, and conference rooms, a new location for library archives, a listening and viewing room, and office space for school staff.

The B.C.C. Center for Teaching and Learning opened to students and faculty in January 2016 and is staffed by five full-time professionals, including the center director, the head librarian, and three staff coordinating each academic center.https://4c6d6c14-5122-4df4-bc39-892a4457fb92.filesusr.com/ugd/1ca4b9_c2973dd5060a44228e1ed85ae0f7b11e.pdf In all, the Center for Teaching and Learning includes the following resources for students:

* Cordish Technology Center
* Doetsch Hall, the school's premier meeting and presentation space
* Joseph Meyerhoff Library, the school's main library on campus featuring physical and digital collections
* Reed Math and Science Center
* The Writing Center
* The Research Center

Academics

Mission

When it was founded in March 1839 as the flagship school of what later became the Baltimore City Public Schools, Baltimore City College was charged with providing a unique classics- and liberal arts-based course of study and with holding all members of its school community to the highest standards of academic achievement and personal development. The school's mission is to prepare its students to succeed in the best colleges In the United States. The faculty and staff of the school strive to engage every student in a rigorous university preparatory study of liberal arts, provide strong extended academic and social support services, and to develop students who enjoy studying and learning. The school's ultimate goal is to produce competitive graduates who have an appreciation for scholarship, perform well on meaningful assessments, make meaningful contributions to society, behave with civility and respect, and perform as reasonable leaders.

19th-century curriculum: the five-year course era

The creation of a male high school "in which the higher branches of English and classical literature should be taught exclusively" was authorized unanimously by the Baltimore City Council on March 7, 1839. The school opened its doors October 20, 1839 with 46 students.Steiner (1894), p.207. Those enrolled were offered two academic tracks, a classical literature track and an English literature track. The sole instructor for both tracks was the educator and poet, Nathan C. Brooks, who also served as principal. To accommodate the two tracks, Brooks split the school day into two sections: one in the morning from 9 am to 12 am, and another in the afternoon from 2 pm to 5 pm. During the morning session, students studied either classics or English; however, the afternoon was devoted to English. In 1849, after a decade of service, Prof. Brooks resigned as principal of the school, which had now grown to include 232 students and 7 teachers, excluding Brooks.

Rev. Dr. Francis G. Waters, who had been the president of the Washington College, succeeded Brooks. The following year the city council renamed the school "The Central High School of Baltimore" and granted the commissioners of the public schools the right to confer certificates to the high school's graduates, a practice still in place today. By 1850, growing enrollment necessitated a reorganization of the school. Under the direction of Waters, the school day was divided into eight periods lasting forty-five minutes: four sessions were held in the morning and four in the afternoon. In addition to reorganizing the schedule, he divided the courses into seven different departments: Belles-letters and history, mathematics, natural sciences, moral, mental, and political science, ancient languages, modern languages and music. Each of the seven instructors was assigned to a distinct department and received the title of "professor".Steiner (1894), pp. 210–211.

In 1850, the Baltimore City Council granted the school the authority to present its graduates with certificates of completion.Steiner (1894), p. 209 An effort to expand that academic power and allow the then-named "Central High School of Baltimore" to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees began in 1865, and continued the following year with the renaming of the institution as "The Baltimore City College" the retitling of its chief academic officer from " principal" to "president", along with an increase in the number of years of its course of study and the expansion of its courses. However, despite this early elevation effort, it ended unsuccessfully in 1869, although Baltimore City College continued for a number of years as a hybrid public high school and early form of junior college (later known as community college) which did not fully appear in America until the beginning of the 20th century. As the importance of college education increased toward the end of the 19th century, the school's priorities shifted to preparing students for college.Board of Commissioners of Public Schools (1902), p. 79.

20th-century curriculum: the A/B course era

In 1901, the course of study at Baltimore City College went through a series of further changes. The most significant was the reduction of the five-year course of study to four years; though students who entered prior to 1900 were allowed to complete the five-year course. The new course, like the course it replaced, allowed graduates to be admitted to Johns Hopkins University without examination, and provided students with greater flexibility. Instead of requiring students to complete the same set of courses, it allowed students to choose their courses, as long as they completed 150 credits. From 1927 to the early 1990s, the college preparatory curriculum at Baltimore City College was divided into two tracks: the "A" course and the "B" course. Though both tracks were intended to provide students with the skills necessary for college, the "A" course was intended to be more rigorous, enabling students to complete sufficient college-level courses to enter directly into the second year of college. In the early-1990s, then-Principal Joseph Antenson removed the two-tier system because he believed it to be racially discriminatory.

The 1960s and 1970s

Population decline in the city of Baltimore due to the migration of middle-class white populations to the suburbs during the 1950s and 1960s, coupled with the failure of Baltimore City Public Schools officials to address infrastructure improvements needed in the school's deteriorating, then-thirty-seven-year-old main academic building lead to a gradually declining public perception of the school's academic reputation. In response, school administrators and faculty developed the "City Forever" strategic plan in 1965–66. The performance improvement plan also served as a call to action for the school community, resulting in formal recommendations from the Alumni Association, a series of student-led demonstrations, newspaper articles and television news segments produced by alumni working as media professionals, letters-to-the-editors of local newspapers submitted by parents and teachers, and routine public comments in support of City College at School Board meetings. The public outcry stunned city leadership, which resulted in the district announcing a recommitment to Baltimore City College and its unique role as the selective flagship high school of Baltimore.

Over the next decade, the local school district failed to delivery on its pledge to adequately fund the revitalized Baltimore City College curriculum and enforce higher admissions standards. In 1975, City students, faculty, and influential alumni like then-Mayor of Baltimore William Donald Schaefer '39 and then-City Comptroller Hyman A. Pressman '33 again engaged in a series of coordinated campaigns, urging political leaders and members of the School Board to provide the resources and enforce the high standards the school needs to succeed. As a result, the City of Baltimore announced its plan to advance funds to complete a $9 million renovation of the school's main building and earmarked funding for a comprehensive, two-year study (1977–79).Leonhart (1939), p. 139. Subject matter experts in education and pedagogy, school faculty, parents, alumni, and other members of the school community formed the "New City College Task Force". The task force, which combed through two decades of previous improvement plans, academic proposals, and experimental curricula, recommended to the School Board a plan that included stricter admissions and retention standards, a revitalized humanities- and liberal arts-based curriculum, and the autonomy to selectively recruit new, highly qualified faculty and administrators.

The Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners ultimately accepted all but one of the task force's recommendations in 1979.Leonhart (1939), p. 140. The group recommended maintaining the school's then-141-year-old tradition of all-male education. Citing concerns over conflicting federal and district court decisions which had not yet been resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, the school board voted to make City a coeducational school. The board's action followed trends at the time at all-male colleges and universities like Harvard University, Yale University, and nearby Johns Hopkins University, which admitted women during the 1970s.

The 1990s

By 1990, enrollment was declining and the academic program at Baltimore City College had once again become subpar compared to its historically high standards. The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, the organization that had accredited the school for years, began raising questions about the institution's ability to offer students an academically rigorous course of study. During this period of decline, the "A" Course was discontinued by newly appointed Principal Joseph Antenson, who contended that the program was racially discriminatory and opted for a standardized curriculum. Antenson was dismissed in 1992 after two tumultuous years as head of school and for the first time ever a private contractor was hired to operate Baltimore City College.

In 1994, Joseph M. Wilson, a lawyer by trade with degrees from Amherst College (B.A.), the University of Pennsylvania (M.A.), the University of Southern California (J.D.), and Harvard University (M.A.), was appointed principal and with the support of alumni and parents, was able to secure more funding and additional autonomy from the Baltimore City Public Schools. Wilson introduced the IB Diploma Program in 1998. The turnaround Wilson orchestrated led to a quick resurgence and restoration of the school's academic reputation. Enrollment, student performance, and the quality of the colleges and universities to which graduates matriculated improved, which attracted critical acclaim from education professionals and international media attention. In 2000, City College was recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School, the highest academic honor bestowed by the U.S. Department of Education. In 2001, the Toronto ''National Post'' reported on its search for the perfect high school in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. One subject of the prominent feature article was Baltimore City College and its turnaround.

21st-century curriculum

International Baccalaureate (IB) is a rigorous, internationally accepted academic program required of all 21st century Baltimore City College students. The IB Middle Years Program is intended to teach freshman and sophomore students to understand how core subjects are interrelated, how to master critical thinking processes, and to increase intercultural awareness. As juniors and seniors, students engage in the rigorous two-year IB Diploma curriculum that requires a comprehensive study of world topics, literature, languages, science, and math. City College's IB certificate and diploma programs provide upperclassmen access to thirty advanced studies courses, which often translate into credit hours at colleges and universities worldwide.

Despite some concerns of the school's alumni association, school administrators proceeded with plans to expand the City College IB Program by incorporating the IB Middle Years Program into the 9th and 10th grade curricula. In addition to the IB courses, the school's academic program offers a small selection of Advanced Placement courses.

International Baccalaureate course offerings

As of the 2015–2016 school year, the International Baccalaureate courses below are offered at the school. Some courses are offered at the higher level (HL) and standard level (SL).

Graduation requirements

Students who successfully complete the school's required curriculum earn the Baltimore City College diploma upon graduation, which has been granted since 1851. The requirements are more stringent than those designated by the State of Maryland.

Requirements for the Baltimore City College Diploma:
* Successful completion of a minimum of one IB Diploma- or Certificate-level course, or AP course
* Successful completion of the IB Personal Project
* Physics or an advanced-level IB/AP science
* Two Fine Arts courses (requirement waived for IB Diploma candidates)
* Successful completion of the College Writing seminar (requirement waived for IB Diploma candidates and students enrolled in IB English IV)
* Minimum cumulative GPA of 70%
* Submit admission applications to a minimum of four colleges (including FAFSA submission)
* Take the SAT or ACT at least two times
* 75 hours of documented Service Learning activity

Admissions

Admission to Baltimore City College is selective but is open to residents of Baltimore City and the surrounding counties in the metropolitan area, though non-Baltimore City residents must pay tuition. Applicants must meet all requirements for promotion to ninth grade, as determined by the Maryland State Department of Education. Additionally, applicants must earn a minimum composite score of 610, calculated by Baltimore City Public Schools. Generally, candidates for admission must have a 3.0 overall numeric grade average (B letter grade; 80 or better percentage grade), have at least a 3.0 average in both Mathematics and English, rank in the 65th percentile or better among all Maryland students in Math and English on the Maryland School Assessment (MSA), and have 90% or better attendance rate. Due to the highly competitive nature of the City College admissions process, successful applicants typically exceed the aforementioned minimums. J.D. Merrill, BCC '09, is the school's current Director of Admissions and Institutional Advancement.

Enrollment

There were 1,309 students enrolled at Baltimore City College in 2015. Of those students, 43 percent were male and 57 percent were female. 85 percent of the total student body identifies as African-American. 10 percent of students at the school identify as Caucasian. Roughly two percent of City College students identifies as Hispanic. One percent of the total student population identifies as Asian.

Athletics

Interscholastic athletics at Baltimore City College date back over 120 years. Though varsity sports were not formally organized until 1895, interscholastic athletics became a fixture at the school earlier in the 19th century. In the late-1890s, City competed in the Maryland Intercollegiate Football Association (MIFA), a nine-member league consisting of colleges in Washington, D.C. and Maryland. City College was the lone secondary school among MIFA membership. The 1895 football schedule included St. John's College, Swarthmore College, the United States Naval Academy, University of Maryland, and Washington College.Leonhart (1939), p. 200. Between 1894 and 1920, City College regularly faced off against the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays and the Navy Midshipmen

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