"So where's Marcus going to school?" Since Sara S. first enrolled her then two-year-old son at Bolton Hill Nursery in Baltimore, the question has become more and more frequent. (The pressure has grown so uncomfortable, in fact, that Marcus and Sara are not their real names.) Now that Marcus is turning five and starting kindergarten in the fall, Sara is starting to avoid the neighbors and acquaintances who broach the subject at nearly every opportunity. To Sara, the judgment in their words and tone is explicit: "It doesn't imply, it says, these people are going to judge us by the decision we make."

Sara's situation isn't as familiar as it sounds. She's not just another hyper-competitive urban mother whose child's future will be plunged into non-Ivy League darkness if not accepted into the perfect prestige kindergarten. The pressure on Sara is of an entirely different nature--a vocal group of parents in the middle-class Bolton Hill neighborhood is encouraging her to enroll Marcus in an experimental public school in one of the nation's most maligned school systems.

If Baltimore City Public Schools was a brand name, its image would require a massive reinvention. Among many middle-class parents in the city and its suburbs, the mere mention of BCPS evokes incompetence, inefficiency, academic stagnation, and physical peril. Like many cities across the country, Baltimore is experimenting with new ways to restore faith in its schools. Though Maryland is not among the thirty-plus states that have passed legislation allowing charter schools, it did approve the New Schools Initiative in 1995. The nine public schools created under this mandate, like charter schools, have more flexibility in curriculum development and student and staff selection, and are run by outside operators contracted by the school board.

Hardly any of the young professionals buying bargain houses in Baltimore want their children to go to their local public school. This is no less true in Bolton Hill, a gay and arts-friendly neighborhood of nineteenth-century brick townhouses on Baltimore's predominantly black and poor west side, than in less progressive parts of the city. The idealistic dream of becoming part of a renaissance and moving back to a city where "white flight" has not yet slowed, stalls out on the subject of education. It remains to be seen whether Baltimore's New Initiative Schools will be able to sell themselves to these middle-class parents, whose needs have historically been met by the city and county's numerous private schools. And alternative public schools still need to address the generations-old problems of race and class that still divide some parts of Baltimore into a black/white city.

In Bolton Hill, a growing group of parents are deciding whether to return to the public school system. Midtown Academy, a New Initiative School, is gaining converts from the ranks of Bolton Hill Nursery, a popular daycare and pre-kindergarten school. Besides Midtown, there are two other options: the traditionally public Mount Royal Elementary and a host of private schools anywhere from fifteen to ninety minutes away. For Bolton Hill parents, shopping for schools before their child turns five is an agonizing process complicated by a wide variety of practical concerns, moral and political values, and social aspirations. The stakes are high, sometimes pitting dearly held convictions about the value of public school in a democracy against the intense fear of not doing right by a child. One's choice is closely monitored in this small community, and judged accordingly.

Bolton Hill 21217

Pounding the pavement

The dream of a neighborhood school

Opting out of the "experiment"

The school on the wrong side of the street

What goes unsaid

A new year, a new class, a New School

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