Prince George's County Public Schools - Magnet Programs and Centers

Magnet Programs and Centers

Magnet Programs were first implemented in PGCPS in 1985, to fulfill a court ordered desegregation mandate. Up until as late as the late-80s, Prince George's County had been predominately white in terms of racial demographics. In order to desegregate mostly all-White schools in the school system, PGCPS created several magnet programs that eventually were instituted in over fifty schools, spread throughout the county.

By the late-1990s, the population demographics of the county had shifted towards a mostly African American majority. Magnet programs (as they were currently setup) were costing PGCPS approximately $14 million per year, to operate. The programs were costly and this was exacerbated by the fact that the school systems operating budget was greater than the final budget the school system had traditionally been allotted, an issue that had plagued the school system for years. Since the county's population now primarily consisted of African Americans and due to the expense of operating the Magnet Schools Program, courts began to investigate the justification of PGCPS's magnet program. In 2004, a court ruled to discontinue court-ordered busing which had existed in the county, for over 30 years, based primarily on the fact that desegregation, was no longer an issue in the predominately Black, Prince George's County.

With the ending of the court-ordered busing, also came changes to the school systems Magnet Schools Program. The systems Magnet Schools Program had gained national attention, as it was one of the largest, in the country. It served as a model for school systems across the nation. Dr. Iris T. Metts, the current superintendent of schools at the time, formulated an ambitious plan to actually expand the magnet programs in PGCPS, as well as reassign magnet programs that weren't performing well at one location, to other schools. Due to long and highly publicized in-house issues between Metts and the current Board of Education, Metts was replaced at the end of her contract with PGCPS, by Dr. Andre Hornsby. When Hornsby arrived, he essentially reversed the decision that Metts had made, in regards to the future of the county's magnet programs, and he decided to instead eliminate most of the schools systems magnet programs — most of which had been identified as under-performing, for several years. Ten magnet programs were identified for elimination, something that proved extremely controversial because some of the proposed eliminated programs were currently located at sites in which the program in question, had been extremely successful, such as the Academic Center magnet program located at Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Center, which had been the highest performing middle school in the system for several years and also identified as a blue ribbon school.

Despite the opposition by parents, in 2006, the magnet programs in PGCPS nevertheless underwent an overhaul, and most of magnets were eliminated, while a few programs that were determined to be "successful", were either expanded and replicated at other locations, or consolidated and relocated to a dedicated magnet school that would serve large geographic areas of the county.