A Reprieve for the Chesapeake Center BALTIMORE (wypr) - Maryland's financial trauma could play havoc with the budgets of important helping agencies. Great care - and perhaps some luck - will be needed escape the budget cut ting unscathed. WYPR's Senior News Analyst Fraser Smith comments in his weekly essay.

The fiscal walls are closing in.

The budgetary framework in Maryland shrinks now to nightmare proportions. Governor Martin O'Malley announced another $300 million in cuts yesterday. And it only gets worse. Next year's spending plan must account for $1 billion to $2 billion less than once anticipated.

Every state agency now competes with every other agency for fewer dollars. Well-settled agencies with highly respected leadership - programs like the Chesapeake Youth Development Center on Patapsco Avenue - live in dread. Chesapeake had been told its school - its lifeline to kids desperate for a second chance - might have to close.

Then came a reprieve albeit a temporary one. Chesapeake's director, Ivan Leshinsky.

"We were able to get the Department of Juvenile Services to restore enough of ourfunding whereby we can operate through the end of the current school year, through June 30 2010. That should give us enough time to continue our discussions with other government agencies, private foundations, individuals to see how we can sustain this school for years to come."

Bonnie Brobst, the center's school principal, said the students were gleeful. They had written letters urging support for their school.

"The Students are excited. We called them altogether this morning and they said we knew we could do it. We tried to impress upon them that it's very important for them to voice their opinion even when they think it would be futile to do so. It is truly a Thanksgiving week for us."

In WYPR's series "Growing Up Baltimore," programs like the one at Chesapeake are being highlighted. They are on the front lines of the city's effort to help young people grow up strong, drug free and open to live.

Under the heading of positive thought s t hat might come into focus during the economic down turn, Ivan Leshinsky urged a new look at the balance between community-based programs and the far more expensive prisons. A city like Baltimore, he said, a city of neighborhoods should choose programs like Chesapeake over prisons.:

"These kids when they got news that the school was going to be closed it just another message that was being sent to them that they have no control over their future "

For the moment, then, the school is intact. It's dedicated teachers are coming to work. And 40 of Baltimore's young people are hanging onto a safe and nurturing place to learn and grow..


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