Gabby's Campaign for theBaer School

High school student Gabrielle Auchincloss has volunteered dozens of hours working with the severely disabled and medically fragile children of the William S. Baer School. Before she goes to college, Gabby is donating a service award she won. This gift will provide seed funding for innovative Apple technology that will enable student learning and communication at the school. Today, she asks you to join her in supporting this project, which will better the lives of the Baer children.

For over 75 years the William S. Baer School, a Baltimore City Public School, has served children with disabilities from all over Baltimore city. The school’s population has evolved from its first students, who had polio, to students with multiple and severe challenges.

The challenges Baer students face include orthopedic disabilities, fragile health conditions, developmental delays, and other health impairments such as Autism, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, traumatic brain injury, and a host of other rare syndromes and disorders. Children are enrolled as young as three years old, and older students graduate at, or by, age 21. Baer’s 185 students come to school on 26 school buses from all over Baltimore city. More than 45 students are tube-fed, and more than 95 percent live below the federal poverty line.


The Baer School serves the most medically fragile students in Baltimore, but diagnoses and limitations don’t make the school unique: our children, staff, and volunteers do. Baer staff members see the ability, potential, and individuality of every child, and set expectations high, then higher again. They create individualized curricula and goals for each student, and deliver these with dedication, patience, caring, consistency, and love.

Because of this care, and because staff and teachers truly believe in them, Baer’s children work extraordinarily hard to make strides in academics and life skills, and leave school each day closer to their goals. Baer students press back against the limits imposed by them with strength and determination, and rise up to exceed high expectations. As a result of these efforts, our Baer students thrive.