How Baltimore is getting vulnerable students back in school and across the stage

When Eugenia Young became principal at Excel Academy at Francis M. Wood High School in the fall of 2019, the attendance and graduation rates for her small alternative high school on Saratoga Street were atrocious. Excel is a place where students are sent when they’re so far behind that they are in danger of never being able to catch up and graduate. It’s a last-chance school. When the pandemic hit, she was suddenly facing a crisis as she tried to try to keep her roughly 300 students connected to school. (Photo: Eric Thompson/The Baltimore Banner)