Baltimore City’s Hampden Elementary/Middle School #55 Gets a Gigantic U.S. Map!

We did it!

Map It! It’s Painting Day at Hampden Elementary/Middle School #55 in Baltimore!

The time has come. Today, the Wham! Parent Co-op will be at Hampden Elementary/Middle School #55 on Chestnut Ave between 36th and 37th streets painting a giant U.S. map on the playground blacktop.

Chris from Budeke’s in Fells Point helped choose the colors: Pool party (for water), purple lace, perfect peach, jasper yellow, and green coral. These are really intense in direct sunlight despite being in the pastel range. They also each look great next to every other color. I can’t wait to see how it looks on the ground.

Lots of volunteers will be there. Ciclovia 5 will be racing down the neighborhood a couple blocks to the east – so if you’re going to that, or you’re planning on strolling down The Avenue, take a short detour and check this out. The fun starts at 9:30 a.m.

Colors by Benjamin Moore 

If You Give a Kid a Cupcake, or Is Baltimore the New Brooklyn?

Yes, moms and dads, I was thinking of this book when I wrote this post!

The New York Times reported on March 16 on the cupcake wars at a Brooklyn public school. There’s some class conflict stirring up in the gentrifying neighborhood of Sunset Park, where the median income has gone from the mid-$30Ks to around $60K in the last decade. Other neighborhood schools in Brooklyn have similar stories, with some P.T.A.s running auctions that bring in thousands of dollars. Inequality is no good for community relations, even inside public schools. (The idea that P.T.A.s have to raise that kind of money at all is another issue.)

A few months ago on this blog I mentioned a book that changed my thinking about starting a charter school – sociologist Judith de Sena’s Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn. In it she reveals some bitterness about the new middle class’ rejection of neighborhood public schools in Greenpoint in favor of charters. What she seems not to appreciate is the resistance of longtime immigrant and working class communities to gentrifiers. The reasons to resist are many, not least of which is the rising costs of living that the gentry bring in their wake. An important site of resistance is the neighborhood public school, over which the old guard may not be eager to relinquish its hold.

The same dynamics are at work in Hampden, the Baltimore neighborhood where I live. The divide between old Hampden and new Hampden is so clear that it pretty much goes unmentioned. Old timers drink at Zissimo’s. Newcomers drink at Golden West, or Holy Frijoles, or 13.5% Wine Bar. Old timers buy coffee at Royal Farms or 7-11. Newcomers buy it at Common Ground or Spro. (There is no Starbucks here. The newcomers value local over corporate enterprise.) Old timers send their children to the local public school or the Catholic school a few blocks away. Newcomers? Historically, they move or pony up for private school. These days, they attempt to start charter schools or enter the charter school lottery. Now a growing group is doing what my husband and I are doing – work to make the neighborhood public school a top choice for every family zoned for it.

About a year ago I sat down on my couch and drew up a mission for an organization that was already beginning to take shape on its own. I called it Wham!, an abbreviated mash-up of Wyman Park and Hampden, two neighborhoods with lots of newcomer parents of infants and toddlers. Our first event was a playground clean-up with the principal. We’ve become regular contributors to our community organizations’ respective newsletters on the school’s behalf. We’ve connected with current parents at the school and catalyzed a move to get every conceivable volunteer opportunity at Hampden Elementary/Middle School #55 loaded up on the Baltimore City Public Schools website. We raised some cash by running a booth at Hampdenfest. We’re putting it toward painting a gigantic U.S. map on the school playground in May. The principal has dubbed us the Pre-P.T.O.

I get lots of “good for yous” and “more power to you” when I talk to people about Wham! It’s encouraging. But we all know that what’s going on in Brooklyn right now presages the kind of friction that could be stirred up here.

We know you can’t make a cupcake without breaking some eggs. If we do this right, though, we might just get some sprinkles to go with it.

A Little Change from the Bottom Up

WHAM! Parents organized a meet-up-and-clean-up at the Hampden Elementary/Middle School playground on Saturday morning. At about 10:00 a.m. we put on some gloves and set to picking cigarette butts and Hershey kisses tags from the grass like chimps picking nits from their babies’ fur. Our principal – who was right there with us on what turned out to be a gorgeous weekend morning – coined a term for our crew. She calls us “the Pre-T.O.”

My souvenirs: rainbow-glittered spin art and a lucky penny. Sweet.

If you’re interested in learning more about WHAM! Parents, stay tuned. A little website is in the works.

UPDATE! On September 10, 2011, just in time for Hampdenfest, the Wham! Parent Co-op website was born! Click to welcome it into the World (Wide Web).