Baltimore Having Trouble Heating its Public Schools

Schools all over Baltimore are going without sufficient heat this winter. Sadly, the problem is not new. Aging facilities, uneven funding, and mismanagement have plagued the system for years. Though Baltimore city schools problem with heating and cooling is well documented, the system has been unable to spend the funds it did have. "Baltimore City schools actually returned more than $65 million in state building maintenance and repair funds over the past eight years, mainly because the funds were not being spent according to the state’s time requirements." reports Edward Ericson Jr. in CityLab.

Ericson Jr.'s account details the ways fraud around the maintenance of city school facilities is decades old and has lead to jail time for some. After audits in 2006 called for review of the system’s financial management, improvements did not materialize. "The next year, it was discovered that millions of dollars in boiler repairs, window and door upgrades, and other critical work was paid for, verified, and inspected—but not done," Ericson Jr. Reports.