Hi friends, Jean Valentino and welcome back to another episode here on Gene Valentino’s Grassroots Truthcast. As

mentioned before, we have guests from all walks of life. And today’s guest is Chris Paps. He’s up in Baltimore,

renowned, award-winning journalist who’s a Fox television outlet in the Baltimore

area. Written a very interesting book called The Failure Factory. We’re going

to talk about that and how uh public schools deprive taxpayers and students

uh of a future that they should be having. This is um something Chris and I

connected on and is synonymous with a lot of stories that um I suspect we’re

both working on uh in parallel uh nationwide on several several venues.

We’re going to come. Hey Chris, how you doing? You still there? I am still here. Thank you so much for having me.

Good to have you with us. We’re going to have a longer conversation with Chris right after this.

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insurance.com. Give them a call today. You’ll be glad you did when you do. And

welcome back to Grassroots Truth Cast. Chris Paps is with me for the next hour

or so. We’re going to talk about several issues. One of them is the failure factory. He’s a renowned journalist and

he’s out of Baltimore, Maryland, award-winning journalist out of um uh Baltimore, Maryland. He’s with Fox 45

there and uh has uh done a darn good job at uncovering some things. and I’m going to let him introduce the rest of himself

and talk about some of the things you’re working on. Welcome aboard, sir. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having

me. So, yeah, so I work for Fox 45 News. I’ve I’ve been here since January of 2017, and I work on a team called

Project Baltimore. And what Project Baltimore is is it’s a team of five people. There’s two photographer,

editors, two producers, and myself as the reporter. And for the past nine years and one month, we’ve been

reporting on one topic. And that one topic is public education. So the reason

that we got here, how we got here, and why we’re doing this is prior to 2017, I

was an investigative reporter working for the ABC News affiliate in Washington DC.

and the company that I worked for, Sinclair Broadcast Group, came up with this idea to have this Project Baltimore

concept of five people working on one topic. So, I thought that was intriguing

and especially for a journalist to be able to have those type of resources was very intriguing to me. So, I moved to

Baltimore and in January of 2017, the topic that we chose was public

education. And the reason we chose that topic is because nine years ago we could

see that Baltimore City public schools according to federal data was one of the

most funded but one of the lowest performing large school systems in America and it had been for years,

decades or even generations. And the question that we came in with was

why is this happening and why is this being allowed to happen? Why are

taxpayers putting so much money into public education, specifically in

Baltimore, and getting so little results when it comes to student academic outcomes. And nine years ago, we started

in Baltimore City. But since then, we have now uh we’ve we’re investigating

the the counties around Baltimore City and also just pretty much all of Maryland at this point because what

we’re seeing and the reason that I wrote Failure Factory is because what we’re seeing in Baltimore is spreading

throughout the entire country. what we can get into during your show here. The the educational concepts, what is

happening that has led to that school system being so underperforming but yet

so expensive for so long is sweeping across the country. And the purpose of failure factory was to educate people on

what is going on and how we can improve public education. Well, what what I that’s what caught my

attention here. What am I misreading your notes? You said you had $1.7

billion dollar of money in your area going to education and only 10% math

proficiency as an example. I mean, is it that disparit?

Uh, well, let’s get into it. So, the book the book covers an 8-year period.

So, it covers 2017 to 2024. Those are eight school years because you got to count. It’s actually 2016 to 2024, those

school years. And let’s just look at the data. The data is this. In 2017, when

Project Baltimore started, Baltimore City Schools had a $ 1.3 billion budget.

In 2024, eight school years later, it was a $1.7 billion budget. So, you’re

looking at a $400 million increase per year in funding. Comes out to about a

30% increase. Well, what did students get out of that? In 2017, when the book

begins, when Failure Factory begins, the graduation rate in Baltimore City was 70%. In 2024,

with a $400 million increase a year in funding, the graduation rate was 70%.

It didn’t change. Math proficiencies in 2017.

The math proficiency rate in Baltimore City, this is the entire school system was 11%. The math proficiency rates in

2024 were 10%. They went down. So 90% of

the kids in Baltimore City in 2024 were not proficient in math. And it got worse

over those eight years as taxpayers gave the school system about a 30% increase

in funding, $400 million a year. And and that gene, those are really the

questions that we set out to answer. Why is this happening? And I wrote Failure

Factory because after doing this for so long, I think we now know why it’s happening. Well, I suspect I need to put

a plug in for failure factory and we’ll do that in just a second. But but are

you rushed to judgment and say there’s fraud or is this just an ineptness of

government or is there a social social cultural impact going on with illegal

immigration? Uh I’m confused as to what’s not moving the needle when more

money is going into it. And is this consistent with what’s going on throughout the nation?

In January of 2017, when I got here, I had already developed a pretty good reputation as an investigative reporter

in Washington DC. And when I came here, I didn’t know anybody and I’d never been

to Baltimore. I literally had never been to Baltimore. And I I thought, okay,

well, what’s this going to be like? So, I had a bunch of people reaching out to me and the people that work in the

school system, people that had been in the area for a long time, uh, people who had who’ve been here like for 75 years

to younger people who are currently teachers and and the overall all theme of what I was hearing was this that the

public education system no longer prioritizes the education of kids. It

prioritizes the acquisition of funding and then using that funding to hire

adults which then grows the political power and influence of public education. So I was told that by a number of people

in 2017 and I flat out did not believe it. I grew up in southeastern

Pennsylvania in a little tiny town. My dad was a a wood shop teacher at a

public school for 35 years in in the teachers union. My brother and I went to public schools K through 12. My kids go

to public school. So when I heard that, when I heard people telling me that the public education system does not

prioritize educating kids, it prioritizes acquiring funding, I didn’t believe it. And if you read Failure

Factory over the eight years that Failure Factory covers, what you

essentially are reading is how my pendulum began to shift. And I went from not believing that at all to thinking,

okay, well, it might be true. to the pendulum swinging more going h people are starting to make some sense to now I

wrote the book because after looking at the data and

spending eight years talking to teachers and parents and students and the administrators that will talk to me I do

now believe that the data show that is absolutely true that the public

education system is not prioritizing the education of kids that’s not to say some

kids don’t get educated. I’m saying the priority is not educating kids. The priority is acquiring funding. And I’ll

just make this last point before we move on. The data that you and I just talked about. Yeah.

You get 400 million additional dollars a year and your graduation rate stays the

same. Your math proficiencies go down. How else can you explain that other than

the focus is on acquiring funding? Because the school systems are very good at acquiring funding. The school system

got a 30% increase in funding over eight years, but the student outcomes either

remained the same or got worse. How do you explain that? And what I do in

failure factory is that that’s just one data point or two data points. I go over a lot of data points that reinforce that

concept. And when you really look at it, Jean, you can’t come to any other conclusion than their energies are put

behind acquiring funding. The energies are not put behind educating kids.

Are you uh sanitizing the the truth by uh the the wrong are

you sanitizing the wrongdoing and not being as accurate as you could be in

saying what it really is? is a fra a perpet a perpetration of a fraud against

the American taxpayer that has tax dollars being used to promote individual

gain in this case at the expense of the students as opposed to uh uh

metrics that show measurement in education and enhancement in education.

Now, you compare that against foreign nations that are have excellent um educational systems, and I’m

embarrassed, Chris. I’m embarrassed that you had to say that uh because that’s

not the America I grew up with in the public school system. My public school system in Connecticut was creme de la

creme. I mean, there was no need to could think of private school training. Uh, I could go on, but would you like to

comment about how fraudulent the system is as opposed to

anything else? Well, let’s talk about that. So, in the five years of the book, five years of

failure factory is an investigation that we did into grade fixing and grade

changing. And I don’t mean B’s to A’s or C’s to B’s. I mean failing grades being

changed to passing so students can metriculate through the school system and graduate that is happening and that

is happening on a large scale and we prove it with our reporting and prove it through failure factory. So here’s

here’s uh just a quick timeline of of what happened and then you know we can talk about if you think this is

fraudulent or not. In 2017, one of the first big stories that that Project

Baltimore produced is we found that out of the 165 or so schools in Baltimore

City, there were six that did not have any students test proficient in any

subject. So hundreds of kids, six entire schools,

not one kid could pass a math or reading state exam. So we do that story and it

blows up as it should. like that should be an alarming story. And I started getting teachers reaching out to me from

Baltimore City schools and they would say to me, “Yeah, this is right, but you realize that many of those kids are

still graduating. They’re getting high school diplomas.” And I would say, “Well, how is that happening?” And the

teachers would say that an administrator is going into my grade book, changing a

failing grade to a passing to metriculate this student through the grades, and then give him a diploma.

The The administrator is the administrator is not the teachers. The teachers are giving the student the

grade they earn which is a failing grade. The administrators are going in and changing the grade. So I get a

number of teachers that are reaching out to me and telling me this. So in November of 2017, I filed a public

records request with Baltimore City Public Schools. And what I requested was documents

pertaining to gray changing. So, emails, internal investigations, things like that. School system wrote me back and

they said, “We’re not going to give you anything. Go away.” So, we sued them. In December of 2017, uh Fox 45 sued

Baltimore City Public Schools. In February of 2019, it went to court and I

testified in court for a couple hours in front of a circuit court judge in Baltimore City. And then the judge ruled

that Baltimore City Schools, and these are the judge’s words, willfully and

knowingly violated the law by not handing over the documents. What the judge ruled was that

time out right there. That’s a crime, is it not? Yeah. Is Isn’t that something that’s

considered torchious and injurious? It’s is a violation of state law. Yep.

Yeah. So the judge ruled that the school system knew that it was breaking the law

but did it anyway to hide potential wrongdoing. So in the book I I give a

lot more details about this but overall we ended up getting 8,000 emails and

many internal investigations that were showing that teachers were writing their

administrators begging them quit going into my grade book and changing my grade. this student did not pass my

class. How did they graduate on Saturday? There’s many examples of teachers that were saying what is

happening should not be happening. Well, the inspector general for education in Maryland, after we sued and won, opened

his own investigation, and what he found was that over a 4-year period, there

were more than 12,500 failing grades changed to passing in

Baltimore City Schools. Wow. With as many as 10% of kids that were

passing who did not earn it. So, a state diploma is a state record. And in

Baltimore City schools, according to the inspector general, you had the school system changing failing grades to

passing improperly. The student wasn’t doing any extra work and issuing state

diplomas to these kids that they did not earn. Now, you’re asking me about fraud.

Does that sound like fraud? Nobody was charged.

No one. Gee, nobody. H this may lead to where President Trump

suggests the complete um abregation of responsibility and the elimination of

the Department of Education at the federal level and the funding related there too and the allowance for uh

chartered school systems or self-private school systems to emerge. Uh, I’ve heard

stories about how the taxpayer dollars used to fund public schools would then

have to somehow uh pivot or transfer over to the taxpayers’s pocket to fund

the private school system their child is now going to. Not in place yet, I understand, but it’s uh it’s a theory

that’s uh I’m told eminent because one must precede the other and the first

hasn’t occurred yet. They they basically look the other way. Why are they looking

the other way? Is it that pervasive? Is it that is that is that is it so

expansive throughout our nation’s educational system that it would take down the House of Cards.

In last year, about this time last year, President Trump held a a speech at the

White House where he announced that he signed an executive order to dismantle the US Department of Education. And if

you watch that speech that President Trump gave, in that speech, he mentions one school system, he mentions

Baltimore, and he mentions my reporting. And what he says is that in 2023,

40% of the high schools in Baltimore City did not have any students test

proficient in math. So, let that sink in for a second. We already mentioned that the school systems budgets about $1.7

billion that taxpayers are giving it. And nearly half of the high schools

could not produce one student who was proficient in math. So, that story is in Failure Factory. And I explained to

readers how we got that data, how we presented it, that the president talked about it. So when he did that, when

President Trump did that, there was outrage all across the country, as there should be. That that is alarming.

But you hear crickets in Baltimore City. In Baltimore City, what the public officials do is they attacked President

Trump. They didn’t say the stat isn’t correct, because it is correct, but they attacked the messenger. And this has

been happening for the entire time that I have been doing Project Baltimore that

we report these stories like the six schools with no kids proficient, like the violation of state law with not

handing over public documents, like the 40% of high schools not proficient in math. All of these reports are in the

book and in all of them I’m the one who gets attacked, not the school system. So

I think your question is why is that happening? Yeah. And what why I think that is happening

is because Baltimore City is is a one party rule political machine. And this

is actually a pretty astounding fact. The only elected Republican that has any

jurisdiction over Baltimore is Donald Trump. every federal and state level and city

level elected official that represents Baltimore City is from one political party. Now, I am not suggesting that the

Republicans have all the answers. But what I am suggesting is that two-party control is better than one party rule

because when you have one party rule, you have no accountability. There’s no checks and balances. And when we report

on the things that are happening in Baltimore City that are in failure factory, you don’t get public officials

or elected officials holding the school system accountable because in that type

of governance, there’s no checks and balances. Okay, two quick rapidfire questions to

that point. Number one, was your job ever threatened because of the extent of your reporting being contrary to

public appetite and Democratic party appetite in that area? Was my job threatened like by my

Were you threatened in any way? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’ve been physically threatened. Oh, yeah. I’ve been I’ve

been physically threatened a lot and I have the emails and the voicemails that I put in failure factory. know you can

you can see what people were saying about me. You know, this guy who’s coming into Baltimore and simply shining

a light on what’s going on and I was being attacked for that. And there were three times that we’ve been doing this

that we’ve had to call the police because the threats went too far and the police had to go pay a visit to the

person making the threats because that that that’s certainly uh it was a thing that that that happens. But the crime is

so heinous and it it’s so expansive. Uh how do you get away with murder forever?

I mean, I just don’t see how they continue to think that this is okay. There’s no accountability. It it’s

there’s there’s no checks and balances in the state of Maryland. And that is

how you get 70% graduation rates, but yet 10% of your kids are proficient in

math. I mean, really try to digest that. You’re graduating 70% of your kids and

90% of them are not proficient in math. That is that is alarming. And where I’m

from and where you’re from, if that were the case in my high school, that’s a pitchfork moment. And that’s that is

that is everyone’s parents demanding the superintendent be fired, that the principles be fired, that new people

come in who are going to improve the quality of education. Because the point

of failure factor is that over the eight years that it covers, taxpayers have

given that school system $12 billion and academic outcomes have not improved.

And the public officials in Baltimore are completely content with it. They’re

happy with their school system. They’re not demanding that it improve, which is why it’s likely not. Folks, we’re

talking with Chris Paps, investigative reporter at Fox 45 in Baltimore. Uh what

an interesting story. Uh this has turned out to be something that needs to we

will continue to bang the drum for you Chris on this point because I’m I’m stunned as I continue with these

podcasts about how many serious issues are out there nationwide that don’t

appear in the comforts of certain prime time news stories. Uh right now as we

speak in February 2026, uh uh the um the um u the wife of the um

the mother of the uh NBC news journalist um Nancy Guthrie is um in Tucson,

Arizona, still not found after almost two weeks of searching. The story is

heartfelt and we certainly wish her the we wish her the very best and a good outcome, but it sits against a backdrop

of stories like this that impact so many more people. You didn’t even mention the

consequence of passing these students, letting them get a graduation, getting a

diploma, they go on to what? High college. how if they got into college uh

if not on a sports scholarship of some sort, if they got into college with the

misrepresentation of the grades and capabilities from uh the secondary system,

uh you got a college system now having to teach remedial reading and basic math

just to get them into the upper uh college courses that they’re trying to get certified in. I I I don’t get how

this can be allowed. I’m more bothered by how why no one did anything. There’s

an old saying, failure to defend the rights of other people may someday result in your rights not being

defended. Someone should have stepped up sooner and said something to this. Were

were was were the teachers who refused to change the grade fired?

Uh so most of the teachers that speak with us and most of the administrators that speak with us do so under uh

anonymity because they will be fired and they know that. Now most of the people

in the school system, the people that are in the classrooms with the kids are there for the right reasons and when

they see something that’s happening that should not be happening, they do want to blow the whistle on it. But they also

don’t want to lose their jobs. They don’t want to lose their pensions. They don’t want to lose their health care. So what they do is they come to me, they

give me information and often times they’ll speak with me and we’ll interview them and only use their voice

after we background them and make sure that they are who they are. But there’s a lot of people that are coming forward

and they’re they’re telling us what’s going on and we depend on the people on the inside, the teachers, the parents,

the students that are coming to us and saying this is what’s really happening in these schools. We interviewed a kid,

a student who missed 120 days of school his senior year and still walked across

the stage during graduation. And what happened there was we had a

teacher reach out to me and give me transcripts from this school. And we could see in the transcripts that these

these students were missing there’s 180 days in a school year. students were missing 120 of them and still

graduating. And in one of the transcripts, I I there was an address.

So, I went to the address and I knocked on the door and the the student well, he’s not a student anymore. He was 20

years old, unemployed, and it was like 1:00 in the afternoon. And you know, I

have all my cameras around me and I he opens the door, I introduce myself, and I start asking him questions about his

time in high school. And he even said to me, he’s like, you know, people graduated who should not have, but I’m

happy that I did graduate even though he didn’t do any extra work to graduate and didn’t even feel like he deserved to

graduate. But the school system let him walk across the stage anyway. And now he

was a 20-year-old guy, unemployed, and really didn’t have any interest in finding a job largely because he didn’t

have the skills to be able the math and the reading skills that he needed.

Okay. You’re talking about Baltimore, Maryland. Now, now tell me, how pervasive is this in other uh I presume

blue states, blue cities around the nation? Well, I wrote Failure Factory because this is certainly happening around the

country. And what we can see what we can see is that public education funding is

skyrocketing, but student outcomes are stagnant or getting worse. All the data

is telling us this. All the data is telling us this. What failure factory is

doing, it is getting granular and going into a school system and showing you the

details about how and why this is happening and how the focus is not on

educating kids. It’s on acquiring that funding because then you hire the

adults. you grow the political influence of the public education system which then you can acquire more funding

because you have more voters and you also have more money within that political machine. And the purpose of

failure factory is to stop it before it gets too bad. And I make the case in the

book that Baltimore is really at the end stages of what a failing public

education system does to a community and does to a society. Yeah, this is a struggling city and

so it’s an example of what could be seen elsewhere, but it certainly stands out as pretty bad.

Absolutely. Every single year. Time out. Time out for a failure factory commercial. Let let us find out how we

can buy a few of these books. How, when, and where. What What’s your website? So my website is chrispaps.com. Uh the

book is can be bought anywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, your local bookstore. or if they don’t

have it, they can certainly order it. And you know, I want to keep the conversation going. I I I wrote the book

for people to read and to understand what’s happening and get involved. And don’t let this happen to your school

system. Don’t let your school system become like a Baltimore City. And the and the data in the book takes

us up to what about 2024? 2024 to 2025. Yeah.

Okay. So since the book was written and published, what uh have you seen a

transition uh any pivot on better numbers since then? No. Well, that’s the question.

So the message got out the bad um the revelation came out to the public

showing what’s transpired in Baltimore. And in from Baltimore’s perspective of

educational operation, there’s been no improvement or betterment. Well, keep in mind that I’ve been doing this for nine

years. So everything I mean since since you brought it out. Yeah. So the book came out just a couple

months ago, the end of 2025. Okay. And since then we have received the 2025

data, test scores, funding. Okay. That’s what I meant. Yeah. Yeah. So the anything looking better?

Well, let’s talk about it. So the school system we mentioned had a $1.7 billion

budget in 24. In 25 the budget went up hund00 million.

So it now has a $1.8 billion budget. The graduation rate went up one point.

It went to 71%. So over eight years, over the nine years

now, the school system got 500 million additional dollars and the graduation rate went up 1%. But one of the main

themes of Project Baltimore, and this is extremely important, is how the academic

standards are being lowered and how many people would call it dumbing down

education. And I’ll give you an example of what happened in Maryland. And and what I do in failure factory is I I give people

examples of things to look for in their local school systems that are indicative of there being some significant

problems. So in 2020, MAR and this had nothing to do with CO by the way. This was before COVID, early

2020, the politicians in Maryland wanted graduation rates to go up. Now, most

people listening to us right now would say, “Okay, well, the best way to do that is to better educate the kids.”

Well, that’s not what Maryland did. What Maryland did was they made it easier to graduate from high school. They changed

the graduation requirements. So in 2019, that graduating class, they had to do

three things to graduate. They needed 75 service hours, 21 course credits, and they had to pass state assessments,

state proficiency assessments to prove that when you graduate from high school,

you are proficient in things like math and reading. Well, starting in 2020, the

state did away with the assessments. Students no longer have to pass state

assessments to graduate from high school. In other words, students no longer have to prove that they’re

proficient in math and reading to get a Maryland high school diploma. And the reason the state did this was to

increase graduation rates. So even with that and $500 million of additional

funding, graduation rates in Baltimore City are only up 1%.

If it’s only up 1%, where did the money go?

So the money mostly goes to salaries, pensions, and benefits. That’s where most of your money is going. Now, as far

as the employees that are in the school system over the eight years that failure factory covers, the $400 million that we

talked about for the increase in in funding, the school system hired, 1300

additional employees. You know how many of them were teachers?

None. Uh, none. I was going to say, yeah, not one. The school system athletic coaches, but not not teachers,

huh? The school system in 2017 had the same number of teachers that it had in 2024,

and they hired, 1300 additional employees. So, who are the employees?

Well, I have all this laid out in Failure Factory. You can see it for yourself. And all this data comes from the Maryland State Department of

Education. It’s director level positions. It’s central office positions. is positions like that.

That’s where a majority, in this case, all of the funding is going. It’s not

getting to the classroom. And Jean, it goes back to what we talked about. The focus is not educating the kids.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s not. It’s um well, when you have a government system that’s not

serving the people it represents, if you have an educational agency or

department of government that intends to educate and is not proving to educate, then the

citizens who are paying the taxes and who are hiring through elections, hiring these people should be sending a

message. If they’re not, if they’re not reforming, are they part and parcel of the crime? I

mean, would you be willing to stick around like many people do in Minneapolis and run outside events and

daycare centers and uh social service uh uh outreach groups that are really

funded from the same mysterious money. uh and and therefore if I’m going to

work in that environment, I best keep my mouth shut on some of this extra money coming in. Not knowing what your uh

investigative reporting actually found, I’m going to say that I’m not too far off in my opinion.

Why would why would so many people that just got hired not recognize the error

of the way as far as the people in Baltimore’s voting? And and this is something that

after eight or nine after nine years of looking at that this I I still really

haven’t allowed myself an answer that I find

acceptable. But I I can tell you that what goes through my brain. So in Baltimore City, there has not been an

elected Republican in city council since 1930s. There has not been a Republican elected

mayor in Baltimore since the 1960s. So those those are the main political

powers in Baltimore City that are local. And you’re talking about generation and generation and generation and generation

of people voting the same way. And you we’re not seeing that change. But I and

this is what’s confusing to me to a degree. And I’m not saying that they necessarily have to vote for

Republicans, but they have to vote for people that are willing to hold the school system accountable. and and

that’s who’s not getting into office. And what confuses me about it is that in

the book I talk to a lot of parents. I go to their homes. I’m sitting in their family rooms with them. I’m looking into

their eyes and I’m I’m I’m spending time with them. And every single one of them

wants something better for their kids. And every single one of them wants a better school system. But they all feel

so defeated and they feel beaten down and they feel like their votes don’t

matter. And that’s the problem. It’s been like this for so long that they

have lo many of them have lost hope and they don’t think that it can change. And

I think it can. I I wrote Failure Factory because I do believe that it can change but it’s going to have to come

from those people, those parents. Yeah. This is not to me a Republican Democrat issue. Uh, and I don’t want to

get into the Donald Trump thing. I just want to make an observation. If the

people see it’s not working, why would you tolerate more of the same?

Uh, look, it I don’t care if you like Donald Trump or not. If he comes out and

supports a remedy to fix this problem, you get behind the guy. I don’t care if

you like him. Get behind the guy because he’s supporting this this cure or this

uh revelation that needs to be addressed at the very least. I I don’t understand

the people. While I’m quick to blame government and bad actors in government,

and quite frankly, they’re they’re there. And they put up a um they’ve put

up a uh Marxist socialistic threat that you best keep your mouth shut and just

go along. And uh I I get the sense that that’s that’s the kind of parent that’s

spooked by trying to uh make waves and and try to change things. But doing

nothing is not an option. When it hits home and it affects your children, you

don’t you’re going to let the kid continue to be psychologically beaten down and ill-educated. I don’t

understand why parents have not stepped up to do something. Um, you can’t keep

blaming the political leader if you keep voting the bad actors back in.

In Baltimore City, one of the problems that a lot of people have is that the school board is mostly not elected. The

school board is appointed by the mayor. So, there are 12 members of the school

board and two of them are elected by the people and that just started, Gan, two

and a half years ago. The first ever elected schoolboard members in Baltimore

City was two and a half years ago. So this is a machine that is not

accountable to the voter and is not accountable to the taxpayer and the parent because they get in there through

other means. So how do they get in? Well, they’re they’re appointed by the mayor. So when people vote for the

mayor, the mayor is going to decide who’s on the school board. So in the

last election that Baltimore had two years ago, you had about six people that were running for mayor in the Democratic

primary. and and that’s all that matters is the Democratic primary. Like that’s that’s that’s the general election for all intents and purposes.

Four of them wanted to replace the CEO. They said, “We need a new direction in our school system. It’s not working.”

One of them who was the incumbent said, “I like the CEO. I like where our school

system is. I support this the current superintendent of Baltimore City Schools.” And that’s the person who won.

So that person wins, goes into the mayor’s office, and and now there’s not any change in Baltimore City public

schools from a leadership perspective because the only person who has the control is the mayor. And so people in

Baltimore City only have one person to vote for, one elected office to vote for

that controls the finances of the city and the school board and a majority of the school board. So, I do think from a

democratic perspective, the system is not set up in a way for people to be

able to have their voices heard. And this is one of my concerns about uh

transitioning off federal to everything local because some of the local um

governances or rules of government are are are not good at all. I come out of

New England and you are correct. uh it would be one or two leaders in government appointing the school board

and uh or the police commission and they they’d honor these people with appointed

positions, but they didn’t necessarily have subject matter expertise on that topic uh to be on that board in the

first place. In fact, it was a thank you or a uh it was a thank you of sorts to

people who worked on their campaign uh as you know. So, uh, again, I say,

um, now, by the way, that concept of of appointing a a board member is mostly in

New England or the Northeast. I’m down in Florida now, and you’re electing

everything all the way down to the darn dog catcher. You elect the school board, you elect everybody. Um, you elect a tax

collector. And I don’t know how what’s the platform when you run for tax collector. I’m going to raise your taxes. Uh my platform is I’m going to

raise your taxes more efficiently. I don’t know how do you how do you run with that? But in the case I’m joking in

the case you just mentioned this is a serious issue that need So what’s the solution? I don’t want to give the the

the the solution away from your book failure factory if it’s in it but where

do you go from here? You describe the problem. Now what’s the solution? So, the book does go over a lot of

solutions, and I I think that it would be a failure on my part if I I did eight

years of investigating the school system and everything that’s wrong and not provide solutions. But the solutions

aren’t coming from me. They’re coming from the people inside the school system that are living this every day, who know

what the solutions are, but they’re not happening because the status quo is very

profitable. And if you’re someone who’s profiting off the status quo, you’re likely not going to want to change it.

So, we can just kind of go over this quickly. So, there’s two avenues here for changes. There’s the policy changes

in the classroom, and there’s the political changes outside of the classroom. And the political changes we

already largely went over. You have to vote for people that are going to hold the school system accountable. And the

other thing that’s really important is in most of the country you do elect your school board members, but most people

sort of see school boards as it’s not that interesting. Most people want to vote in the presidential election. But I

would argue that your school board, unless you’re in the military, is probably more impactful on your life

than the president because the quality of your local education affects your

home values. It affects your taxes. It affects your crime rates and it affects

your business because if your companies can’t hire good local people because

they’re undereducated, that’s going to affect your economy. And all of that goes back to your local school boards.

So, we have to put a lot of energy into who’s in our local school boards. from a from a policy perspective,

one of the main things and and there’s a there’s a number of things in failure factory you talk about, but one of the main things to fix the schools now is

something that wouldn’t cost any additional money. It wouldn’t be that hard to do and that is simply you have

to hold the students accountable for their actions. And about 101 15 years

ago, we took this turn in America where we decided that we were not going to

hold students accountable. and that they could misbehave in school and we were going to keep them in school. We weren’t

going to discipline them. And if a kid is acting out in a class and the teacher sends them to the principal’s office,

the kids right back in the class the next period, that that is so problematic. And when you talk to

teachers, that is one of the main barriers to education is that we have this mindset now in America where we are

not holding the students accountable for their actions. That has to change and

that could happen tomorrow and have a huge impact. Well, that the ripple effect to that is you just demoralized

the teacher who sees this punk coming back into the classroom with hardly

being um uh admonished by the by the principal or whoever. Uh and and now

she’s she or he is stuck again with this bad behaving student and you going home

every day after a year of that that probably drive anybody crazy. uh is it that kind of lack of discipline

uh that’s not being addressed? I mean, I remember I never went to the principal because the teacher in the classroom

jumped on me pretty hard and didn’t have to send me to the principal. You know, the admonishment

doesn’t happen anymore. It doesn’t happen anymore. Teachers authority in the classroom has has largely been stripped to them.

They’re they’re not given the authority to discipline students. They’re not given the authority to hold this the students accountable anymore. And we’re

seeing a massive teacher shortage in America. And it’s not because people don’t want to help kids and teach. It’s

because of the environment in which we have created in our public schools. And the other thing is, Jean, it’s not about

money. I have never had a teacher tell me they don’t make enough money. You know why? Because you know exactly how

much money you’re going to make when you become a teacher. There’s no surprises. It’s all right there in the union

contract. So to become a teacher and then complain about how much money you make is disingenuous because you knew

what the contract was going in. And I’ve never had a teacher tell me they don’t make enough money. What they tell me is

they don’t have enough authority in their classrooms. They are they’re being

pigeonheld. They are being micromanaged. They’re being told how to teach instead

of using their own experiences in the classroom to teach kids. It’s a huge problem. And the problem isn’t created

by the teacher. The problem is created by the administration

that is that has developed this environment in schools in which teachers don’t want to be.

But it is money. It’s the environment at the global level with the elected

officials that have raised taxes, increased education costs.

Yep. And uh with little or nothing to show for it. And someone’s getting that

money. And that’s what the What’s that? Well, that that’s exactly that that’s

the that’s that’s what we started your show with. The focus is on money. All these decisions are being made

because of money, not teacher compensation money. I’m talking the revenue coming in from the

taxpayer that um is is only a small a small portion of which seems to be

teacher compensation. The there’s something bigger and grander going here at the political level that has been

perverted. And I think that’s your next news story is catching those wrongdoers

blind because you’ve laid it out so well. Folks, we’re talking with Chris Paps. He’s a investigative reporter

formerly with CBSNBC ABC and and now with the Fox affiliate Fox 45 out of

Baltimore. Great guy to have Chris Paps with us here today. Chris, another plug

please before we close. What’s where do I get the failure factory?

Uh you can get on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Goodreads, wherever the books are sold. And you know, I really hope

that um people read the book and reach out to me and that the conversation I’m having with you is the conversation I

want to continue having because we we got to fix our public schools. We all know that and I think Failure Factory

lays out the pathway to do that. And I’m really easy to find on on X. I’m just Chris Paps. C H R I S P A P S T Facebook

Chris Papaps. Chrispaps.com. Please pick up a copy of the book. Let me know what you think. And you know,

let’s let’s make America better. And folks, I’m going to put a uh a graphic

up on my website as well, so you can catch it there. If not through Chris, I’m at Genevalent, genevalentino.com,

the grassrootscast.com. Go there. Oh, please subscribe. You can

watch this episode along with any many of the others we do each week here from the Grassroots Truthcast. We send them

out weekly. Some are by radio shows. summer uh with the Newsmax affiliation I

have and the others are general individual uh podcasts like I’m doing

today with Chris. Chris, any final thoughts or comments you’d like to make?

Thank you so much for having me on and I hope the people learned some stuff from from this show and and that they can

take something away from it. And we gota we we can’t allow more Baltimore City public schools throughout America. We

have to stop it and we can stop it before it happens. But as I said, it’s it’s going down that way. So, we got to

stop it soon. The beauty of America is that America allows for people like you, the

grassroots, to step up and step out and um and bring these issues uh front and

center, revealing um the good points and our warts and pimples at times. But

you’re doing that and that’s what makes uh America so great really is that and

this is what the kids ought to be learning in school is that we’re a self-deprecating nation. The people

criticize themselves and look in inwardly at um the nature of our

operation and we’re quite critical of it unlike most other nations of the world which you’ll never see that kind of um

uh self-deprecation coming from autocratic controls. We’re the oldest nation this year, Chris, 250 years. It’s

a it’s a big time for America. God willing we get 250 years more. And we

will folks with people like you buying Chris’s book and realizing his ex his

issue with education in Baltimore described mirrors what’s going on

throughout the nation. And it’s your job and mine. We can’t be pointing the

finger at anyone else. It’s your job and mine to help Chris and thousands of

people like him who are trying to do the right thing and bringing issues like this forward to the nation so that we

can fix ourselves from within. We got corrupted from within. Now let’s fix

ourselves from within. Politics aside, thank you Chris Paps for joining us here

today. Thank you. And thank you ladies and gentlemen for joining us on another

episode of Gene Valentino’s Grassroots Truthcast. Go to the site www.genevalentino.com.

Please subscribe and uh we’ll push these episodes out to you weekly. You’ll also

find them on all the social media platforms as well. Thank you again for another episode on Gene Valentino’s

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