By Deborah Bailey, Special to the AFRO

The first day of school is less than two weeks away for thousands of Baltimore City Public School (BCPS) students, including the 242 young men and women currently enrolled at Renaissance Academy in the Druid Heights community of West Baltimore.

The school’s new principal, Tammatha Woodhouse, and her staff have already started their school year and are hard at work ensuring the building is ready to welcome students who come from some of the city’s most challenging circumstances on September 4.

Tammatha Woodhouse, the new principal of Renaissance Academy is preparing the beleaguered high school for the new school year. (Courtesy Photos)

“Renaissance has all the ingredients for a great school,” Woodhouse, who started in July, told the AFRO. Woodhouse has a background with students living in challenged and traumatized settings as the former principal of Excel Academy, a public school that accepted students whose high school experience was interrupted for various reasons.

“We often look at Renaissance as an alternative school, but it’s not,” said Woodhouse. “It’s a comprehensive high school,” she said.

Woodhouse says she is ready to calm the concerns of some after the unexpected departure of veteran principal Nikkia T. Rowe, a beloved figure by many at Renaissance and the larger Druid Heights community. Rowe was abruptly fired in June for failing to submit recertification credentials, a technical issue. Rowe led Renaissance Academy, a school that struggled with violence, including three murders of students at the school in a little more than year following the uprising in 2015. The once decrepit school also received desperately needed building repairs in 2017, made possible by The Baltimore Ravens organization, which invested more than a million dollars in building renovations after Renaissance was placed on the BCPS list to close.

Woodhouse expects the addition of organized sports, along with the level of community investment and support that currently surrounds Renaissance Academy, to provide a fresh start for the school.

“We will have a full range of organized sports this fall including football and basketball, volleyball track and lacrosse,” Woodhouse said.

Woodhouse said she wants to reinforce the school’s relationships with local churches, many within walking distance of the school, the University of Maryland’s Promise Heights program, the Lt. Governor’s Office and a partnership with the City’s Violence Prevention Program among other supportive services.

“Our relationship with the superintendent’s office, the State’s Attorney and the Mayor’s Office are strong,” Woodhouse affirmed.

Woodhouse has her eyes set on increasing enrollment to 400 and expanding student involvement in helping to keep the school safe and thriving.

“…I met with the student advisory board of the Violence Prevention Program here at Renaissance Academy,” she said.

“We are dedicated to a safe environment and to seeing our students graduate job ready and college ready.”

For many students and alumni like Antonio Christian, who graduated in 2016 and worked at Renaissance Academy until this year, the staff has become a surrogate family, one that has its ups and downs.

“They’ll get it together,” Christian said in response to the administrative changes at Renaissance.

“I haven’t met her yet,” he said of Woodhouse, “but they are like my uncles and aunts; my grandmothers…. they will make it,” he said.   “Once you graduate from Renaissance, you don’t leave.”