BALTIMORE — Baltimore charter school Dream Academy will open to pupils next year with an extra $1.4 million in its budget thanks to a new interpretation of grant guidelines by President Donald Trump’s administration.

That development was announced at the July 8 meeting of the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners by district CEO Sonja Santelises. It meant that the commissioners were no longer confronted with a dilemma: either enroll fewer pupils from the Hunting Ridge neighborhood in which the school is located or turn their backs on a seven-figure government grant.

“Dream Academy, like charter schools for more than two decades, will continue to serve its neighborhood zone,” Santelises told the commissioners. “As a result, a board vote on this issue will no longer be necessary.”

Santelises’ announcement came as a welcome surprise after what has been a string of dismal financial news for schools nationwide as the Trump administration tries to curb education costs.

As recently as Monday, Maryland joined nearly two dozen other states and Washington, D.C. in suing the Trump administration for withholding $6.8 billion in previously authorized education grants.

The Baltimore school board previously voted June 10 to convert Thomas Jefferson Elementary/Middle School from a public school to a operator-run charter school with an arts integration focus. The new charter school is expected to open in the fall of 2026 and will be run by the educational nonprofit Arts for Learning Maryland.

It will feature classrooms co-led by teachers and teaching artists, according to the website, an approach modeled on successful summer and after-school programs.

“Dream Academy is not just about integrating the arts,” middle school teacher Yvette Freter says on the website. “It’s about transforming how we teach. It gives teachers the time, tools, and training to meet the diverse needs of our students.”

The team planning the new school hoped to take advantage of the federal charter school program grant that provides up to $2 million to either open new charter schools or convert existing public schools into these operator-run institutions. But the planners ran afoul of a government stipulation:

“The definition of federal charter schools during President Joe Biden’s administration was that they had to run lotteries and be open to anyone,” said McKenzie Allen, executive director of the Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools, which administers the federal grant program for the Old Line State.

Baltimore City currently has 31 charter schools, according to its website, and 23 use a lottery to enroll students. But the city also has eight neighborhood charter schools — former public schools that were transformed into charters but continue to prioritize enrolling students living in the surrounding communities.

In Baltimore, those schools are: The Belair-Edison School, City Springs Elementary/Middle School, Frederick Elementary School, Furman L. Templeton Preparatory Academy, Govans Elementary School, Hampstead Hill Academy, Wolfe Street Academy and Pimlico Elementary/Middle School.

Thomas Jefferson Elementary/Middle also is a neighborhood school. Arts for Learning wanted to accept the federal grant, so it asked the school board to waive the requirement giving precedence for enrollment to the upcoming Dream Academy to youngsters from the neighborhood.

The board postponed voting on the issue until July 8, saying commissioners needed more time to weight their options. In the interim, Allen asked the U.S. Department of Education’s legal team — newly appointed under the Trump administration — to reconsider the requirement that admission to charter schools be decided solely by lottery.

“They came back really quickly with a new interpretation of the law that said that would allow for neighborhood zoning for a charter school,” Allen said.

Allen said the new legal interpretation could mean that some existing charter schools with neighborhood zoning such as Pimlico Elementary/Middle, which has a health sciences focus, might be eligible for the same federal grant that will benefit Dream Academy.

“We’re really excited that we get to work with Arts for Learning and help them build their dream school,” Allen said.

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