Students try to foster relationship with neighborhood

BALTIMORE (AP) — The students showed up on Eleanor Schwartz’s front porch with a handwritten note and a potted sunflower.

They were going door-to-door along Hampden’s Berry Street with a mission: Change the way adults think about their school.

The Academy for College and Career Exploration is in the heart of the North Baltimore neighborhood, but students ride the bus there from all corners of the city. At a school where most students are black, in a neighborhood where the majority of residents are white, the students are trying to tackle assumptions about who they are.

In this hyper-segregated city, students choose from a portfolio of citywide high schools, regardless of where they live. This has led to a handful of schools, like ACCE, where the demographics of the students differ dramatically from those in the neighborhood.

The setup has caused some residents to feel disconnected from the school building next door — and hostility toward the students who go there to learn each day. The kids, meanwhile, can feel that they’re being profiled.

The teenagers have heard about past neighborhood meetings at which people complained about them being loud and disrespectful as they leave school. They’ve seen posts on the community’s Facebook page describing them as trouble. Tensions at times ran high enough that mediation was needed.

“When we walk past them, they’ve got this look in their eyes,” said Jamaal Wescott Jr., an ACCE senior who lives near the Baltimore County line. “It’s sad, because some of us really care about this community."

The loudest and nastiest complaints, said community council president Eli Lopatin, are from a small group of residents. Most people are supportive of the school, he said.

“Hampden has historically had a bit of a...