Baltimore City school board on track to gain a new member as incumbent loses ground

Incumbent Baltimore school board member Kwame’ Jamal Kenyatta-Bey may lose his seat to challenger Domonique Flowers.

Kenyatta-Bey, who has served four years on the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners, could wrap his term at the end of the year. Flowers had secured 26.9% of the vote by Wednesday morning, besting Kenyatta-Bey’s draw of 22.5%.

The other incumbent, Ashley “Ash” Esposito, will likely keep her seat. She kept the lead she established during the summer’s primary race, securing the highest proportion of votes at 27.7%.

Jamar Day has 22.4% of the vote, meaning he is unlikely to secure a seat.

Though all of city precincts have reported at least some Election Day results, the votes have not all been tallied and no candidates have conceded. The two candidates with the most votes will snag four-year terms on the school board.

Of the 12 seats on the school board, nine are filled by mayoral appointment, two are elected by city voters and the final seat goes to a student elected by their fellow high schoolers. After Tuesday’s election, there are still two gaps on the school board the mayor needs to fill. One of them opened after commissioner Mujahid Muhammad resigned following an FBI search of a building associated with his nonprofit.

Flowers is an attorney and adjunct professor who spent over a decade working with Baltimore students as a substitute teacher and in after-school programs. A former Maryland PTA board member, Flowers is a father of two with a 5-year-old in a city elementary school. He has also represented students in IEP and 504 meetings as a special education attorney.

If he secures a board seat, Flowers told students at a candidate forum that he’d want the district to train staff members on dealing with students’ mental health as they grapple with issues “that I have never seen in my entire life.” He’s had many student clients who were ignored or misdiagnosed, he added, and he’d want to connect them with services and erase mental health stigma, especially for Black boys. He said he got through high school with the aid of anger management counseling.

Flowers said just past midnight Wednesday that he was pleased by the night’s results.

“I’m really excited that the voters decided to put their trust in me. I want to make sure that I bring back trust to the school board,” Flowers said. “I want to show people that the school board can care about children and also the school system can be a voice of change.”

Esposito and Kenyatta-Bey originally secured their seats in 2022, the first year Baltimore residents were able to vote on their school board members.

Esposito has a background in community organizing and has a child in the public school system. She’s open about how her neurodivergence, learning needs and years in the foster care system shape her perspective on the school board, where she’s championed a school closure moratorium. She considers herself a Democratic socialist and has said she’s focused on uplifting working-class families and students with additional needs, such as those with disabilities, those who are learning English, experiencing homelessness or in foster care.

Esposito said around 12:45 a.m. Wednesday that she was “really, really grateful” for her apparent victory.

“It just felt really good to do it again, especially as someone like myself who am not an educator,” Esposito said. “I’m someone who has lived experience of not getting a K-12 education in the ways I needed to.”

She said her last four years on the school board have made her a better mom and advocate. Over her next term, she wants to form a cohort of students in the foster care system and other groups of kids with low graduation rates who can look at school board policies and tell members their concerns. While the district has improved its test scores, she wants to see movement for students “on the margins,” too. She also wants to get protections for immigrant students in writing as the federal government ramps up deportation efforts.

Kenyatta-Bey taught in Baltimore public schools for more than three decades and sent his child and grandchildren to be educated by fellow Baltimore schoolteachers. He’s long been involved in theater and has advocated for expanded arts education throughout the district. Though an incumbent, he didn’t publicly take positions as firmly as his opponents, and his campaign lacked a website. Kenyatta-Bey said he relied on word-of-mouth for his second run.

Day was neck-and-neck with Kenyatta-Bey. The former teacher and community organizer now works for the Maryland Department of General Services. He entered the race after the district closed his nephew’s charter school, the Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys, earlier this year.

Though he’s still waiting on the final results, “the odds are definitely not in my favor right now,” Day said. If he does lose his campaign, Day plans on applying for one of the two open spots the mayor appoints.

“If that’s not the case either, there’s always 2028,” Day said. “I know my campaign left a mark on Baltimore.”

School board members set districtwide education policy, hire and oversee the superintendent (called a CEO) and approve the school system’s budget. Elected board members work alongside CEO Jermaine Dawson, who so far has focused on improving chronic absenteeism rates, raising student test scores and correcting how some district schools are overflowing while others are too small to sustain.

Flowers said he’s looking forward to working with Dawson to make sure all Baltimore students graduate college- and career-ready and that the district “is on the way to being the best it can be.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.