Some parents fear sending their children to school as Charm City faces a surge in youth homicides and shootings.
"The school-to-prison pipeline — or really the school-to-grave pipeline — is really real in Baltimore City," Jovani Patterson, who has two young children, told Fox News.
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Baltimore City Public Schools held a ceremony last week remembering the 19 students shot and killed within the past year. The youngest victim was 8 years old. The previous year, gunfire claimed the lives of 12 students.
Some of the shootings occurred on or near school grounds, while others happened elsewhere in the community.
Patterson partially blames lack of education for the violence. He's suing the school system and city officials, alleging schools misused taxpayer funds, reported ghost students in order to gain more funding, falsified pupils' records and more.
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Baltimore had the lowest graduation rate across Maryland during the last school year. At one high school, 77% of students read at an elementary or kindergarten level.
"The education level of those doing the shooting and the those that are getting shot are often times third grade and less," Patterson said. "What future are you really setting up for these youth other than fighting to survive?"
Homicides and shootings overall have decreased in 2023, according to Baltimore police, but the opposite is true for juveniles: Youth homicides increased 67% and shootings are up 55% from this time last year.
Blanca Tapahuasco, who homeschools one of her sons while the other two attend public vocational schools, said she fears for her children's safety.
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"I don't feel safe," she said. "I drop [my son] off and pick him up because he does not want to ride the public school bus."
Tapahuasco believes schools are "targets for children to be enlisted" by gangs.
"We know that there's gang activity," she said. "The violence is so horrific that it's intentional, hateful and just horrible. So you're going to struggle or you're going to get scooped up by the gangs or you're going to get swallowed by the streets."
Kids under age 13 can't be charged with nonviolent crimes under Maryland state law. Relatives of a 12-year-old boy shot and killed in April told Fox45 that adults are recruiting children to commit crimes for them.
"We have a very liberal state," Tapahuasco told Fox News. "The consequences are going to fall on everybody. They don't just fall on people who vote a certain way. They fall on all of us."
As violence continues to rise among students, Patterson said education is no longer the top priority for many kids at Baltimore schools.
"The biggest thing they want to do is be safe," he said. "It's not learning. It's not education. They go to school and say, ‘Hey, I just want to be able to come back home.’"
To hear more from Patterson and Tapahuasco, click here.
