A West Baltimore principal chose her students’ future over her school’s

Principal LaWanda Wilson is an expert at making do at her tiny West Baltimore boys school. In the past year, she and her assistant principal have filled in as part-time guidance counselors, Algebra teachers and coordinators of special education when they didn’t have the money to hire them. But last January, Wilson sat down with her supervisor to confront her budget for the following school year, and she saw that Bluford Drew Jemison STEM Academy West would need about $1.4 million more than the city school system would give her based on her shrinking enrollment.