Baltimore City Public Schools’ four-year graduation rate has inched up to 71.7% for the Class of 2025, a one-point gain since 2017, even as the district’s total funding climbed by about 38% over the same stretch. The slow progress is sharpening questions about what taxpayers are getting for their money just as the school board gears up to pick a successor to CEO Sonja Santelises.
City Schools has framed the uptick as a win, calling it “a powerful testament” to targeted supports such as credit recovery programs, ninth-grade interventions and expanded post-secondary advising. According to Baltimore City Public Schools, the district also logged a 74.6% five-year graduation rate and said 289 more students earned diplomas in 2025 than in the previous year.
Funding Rose While Outcomes Stayed Flat
Watchdogs see a different storyline in the numbers. Project Baltimore found that the school system’s budget went from about $1.3 billion in 2017 to nearly $1.8 billion in 2025, a jump the story calculates at roughly 38%, while the four-year graduation rate moved just one percentage point in that same period. FOX Baltimore also noted that, even with the added spending, Baltimore still sits near the bottom of Maryland districts on the four-year graduation metric.
State Trends
The statewide backdrop is murkier. Local reporting and state data show Maryland’s overall four-year graduation rate has shifted in recent years, while dropout counts have risen among Hispanic and multilingual learners, making year-to-year comparisons across districts trickier. Those demographic and reporting changes are now wrapped into the broader argument over how to judge whether extra funding is really moving the needle. WBAL has tracked those statewide shifts alongside Baltimore’s recent gains.
For critics, though, the technical debates over counting and assessments do not change the core concern. “What is the return on our investment as taxpayers? We're not seeing that,” Jason Rodriguez, co-founder of People Empowered by the Struggle, told Project Baltimore, which also reported that Maryland changed graduation rules for the Class of 2025 so that passing state assessments is no longer the only path to a diploma.
Leadership And The Board Search
All of this lands as a leadership transition looms. With Dr. Sonja Brookins Santelises’ contract set to expire June 30, the school board has opened a national search, a move critics say heightens pressure to show clearer academic gains. Baltimore Fishbowl reported that the board has posted a CEO job listing and pitched the next leader’s role as accelerating academic progress while managing an operating budget of roughly $1.7 billion.
The district, for its part, argues that simple year-to-year comparisons do not tell the whole story and points to targeted spending it says is starting to pay off. In a statement, Baltimore City Public Schools reiterated that ninth-grade supports, expanded credit recovery and more robust post-secondary planning contributed to the latest gains and said that deeper improvement will require time.
For parents and taxpayers, the numbers set up a straightforward test: can the next CEO turn rising dollars into steady, visible gains in graduation, attendance and readiness for jobs or college? The outcome of the board’s search, alongside the district’s coming budget cycles, will offer the first real clues about whether strategy and spending can translate into faster progress on diplomas and post-high-school success.
