With home visits, mentorship and sneakers, Baltimore City schools program aims to bring students back to class

When Da’Quane Gilliam started thinking about dropping out of high school in 2019, Roger Shaw of the Baltimore City Public School System started showing up at his house to try to change his mind.

The two first met when Shaw saw Gilliam walking across the street from Patterson High after school. Shaw had heard from teachers that he should keep an eye on the teenage ninth grader. Talking on the street that day, Gilliam told Shaw that school wasn’t for him. Shaw replied that he wasn’t going to give up.

As part of several home visits, Shaw invited Gilliam to the BCPSS Re-Engagement Center and arranged for him to be placed in different schools until he found the perfect fit: Career Academy, an alternative school that has a smaller community that Gilliam felt he could better handle. There, the people felt like family, Gilliam said. He became president of the student government association and got to explore the region through monthly field trips.

Today, Gilliam is a high school graduate of the Class of 2023, preparing to attend the Community College of Baltimore County this fall.

“It don’t seem real because I never thought I would graduate,” Gilliam said. “But I am proud of myself.”

Absenteeism has been a longstanding issue for the school district, which has a dropout rate of 17.8%, according to the state education department. And the coronavirus pandemic only worsened the problem.

Yet over the past year, the Re-Engagement Center has nearly doubled the number of students it’s helped bring back to school, with the total rising from 661 last year to 1,083 this year, said Shaw, who is the executive director of reengagement for city schools and has spent the bulk of his career in Baltimore.

He credits the success to the resources allocated to the program and word-of-mouth...