Baltimore International Academy, Baltimore | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

“Worst School In Baltimore City, Your child will not be safe.”

While at this school my son received multiple injuries from other students, was attacked by a group of students in his Russian Emersion class, was choked by another student, then disciplined for hitting the child who was choking to make him stop. If you were looking for something good in this review, I think you might want to read one of the other reviews. I was at his school almost everyday, helping out all over.

The cafeteria is terrible. The teachers have no control over the students. I think if someone actually cared, it would make a difference.

My son spent his whole kindergarten year and half of his first year at this school. I have to say their curriculum, might have been alright if he had stayed in there. When I transferred him in the first grade he was behind all of the other students in his new class. It was not the best experience.

I have personally taken issues to the principal and talked to him about what was going on in my child’s classroom. I let them know how some of the children in the Russian immersion class who were taking martial arts formed a gang and were beating up other children. My concerns fell on deaf ears.

My son was seeing a therapist because of the bulling he was going through in school. They refused to call me when someone did something to hurt my son, but when he said he was going to kill himself they gave me a call. I have watched them hide stuff to cover themselves. This has to be one of the worst schools in baltimore city.

My son was often the attack of bulling, but because he used to tell the teacher a lot his complaints started falling on deaf ears. They are so overwhelmed with the children and cannot keep the classrooms under control. My son was in the Russian immersion program and I walked in his classroom to see him standing while the rest of the class was sitting. He was punished to stand at his desk because he was fidgeting. When I saw him it was on a Thursday and He had not had a chair all that week. That is corporal punishment. They of course denied it, but I recorded her doing the same thing to another student. Then they wanted to limit my time in the school.

The final straw came when my son was choked by one of his bullies in the classroom. I was in class assisting with getting them down to lunch, and I witnessed the incident. While he was being choked, my son punched the other child in his face. The principal said that he should have told someone what was going on. This was crazy, how can you say something when you are being choked.

I also requested an IEP for my son who was having issues with learning. His teacher said that my son had no issues learning and she felt he would be ok. Later, she asked me if I could ask him to stay focused. She went on to say that in her country Russia, either you want to learn or you don’t. They don’t have all these disabilities that people in the united states place on people. She basically got me in the hallway to say she felt my son did not want to learn.

I was at the school almost every day, not because I wanted to volunteer but because I wanted to make sure no one hurt my son. When I thought things would be better and went back to work things got worse.

I think this school experiments with the our children. I am sure that if you go through their program the whole time the benefits might ok, but at what cost. The class was made up of 27 students. 1 child was white and all the others were black. I watched this poor white child get bullied his entire kindergarten year because he was white. And my son got bullied because he was too dark. Then the same children from his kindergarten class went to the first grade with him. The same thing happened.

I recommend that if you look for other schools in the community. If you really want your child to learn a foreign language, get them the rosetta stone.

I hope no one will go through what we did.

I finally pulled my two sons out after 7 years. I would consider myself a fairly involved parent, on the side of teachers, that worked to try and make BIA successful. There are some really great teachers there, and some great student families, but the administration does not lead enough to provide a healthy atmosphere for learning.

My diagnosis is that there is no model for a philosophy of respect for the students and their potential. Generally speaking, students are treated like little bothersome nuisances. Rules and draconian policies are set to expect the worst possible behavior. Sometimes kids are referred to by number, rather than by name. Whole-class bathroom breaks are scheduled. Everyone is supposed to move around the school in lines, all because they don’t trust the students. Yet, because there are no real consequences for bad behavior, much of the school day is chaos.

Lots of schools are having real problems with behavior these days, but the administration at BIA has given up. There is never a suspension, even for assault and bullying during class time. The most-often used punitive measure is to bar the whole class from recess, even if only a few kids were misbehaving. There is also no recess for middle school at all. (These policies are against BCPS rules.) Students are hardly ever allowed outside, even during COVID-19.

BIA has teacher-led bible and prayer meetings at the school. They sometimes promote Christmas in class. Substitute teachers are often unqualified and lose total control of the classroom. The facility is not clean. The bathrooms always smell of urine. The lunch staff is practically violent.

I gave 2 stars because some of the teachers are so exceptional that they sometimes achieve great things for their students, in spite of the administration and atmosphere. There are some real success stories for a few kids. The teachers of the younger grades in French are particularly great, including Ms. Tchapda, Mr. Allucier, Mr. Ben Zahni, and Mr. Mbami. The ELA team is led by Dr. Moore who is a beacon of light for the school.

There is potential at BIA, but they need an overhaul in how they treat the students, and take a hard look at what kind of atmosphere they want to create.

An experience which I would much rather recommend as 0 stars. No child deserves to deal through this for nine years. The mice and roaches throughout the school are something that must be known to all families. I am impressed with how low the withdrawal rates from the school. The bathrooms are absolutely disgusting and it takes forever for them to get cleaned. I am sure I may sound like a pessimist, but I will admit, I am not exaggerating whatsoever. Parents do not know the issues with the school. Teachers do not care and I am shocked by the amount of stories I hear about teachers publicly embarrassing students. When students are injured, some students do not give a darn. Students do not receive proper training for all the issues they deal with. Keep in mind, throughout this, this is about 1/4 of the issues. I may be biased due to the fact I went to this school, but it is truly awful. They make students pose for cameras, even when they are unhappy here. Whenever there is a school wide review of the school, nothing gets fixed because they give us multiple choices and not just our opinion and a free place to type. Bathrooms are unavailable unless everyone is going as a class, which can be irritating when say, you are on your period. Teachers are biased and often play favorites. Specific teachers are known to let students walk out of the classroom when upset, where they could get hurt and some teachers don’t let the office know when such happens. My friendly recommendation? Do not go to this school. Try anywhere else.