With crime down and jobs up, Baker turns his attention to Prince George's schools They lined up at the microphone at a community meeting one recent evening to give their to-do list to Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker III. It was the usual suburban fare: sidewalks, sewers, safety. But one issue kept coming up: What was Baker planning to do about the ailing public schools? Baker, who ran in 2010 on a promise to address corruption in county government, promote economic development, improve public safety and revamp the public school system, was not pleased. He thought by now residents would have understood how important it is to him to boost public schools. He quickly sent an e-mail via smartphone to several top aides sitting in the audience: If people can't feel the change, there is a problem. "That must change," Baker warned. At the midpoint of his first term as county executive, Baker (D) can cite many improvements. His county of 900,000 residents has been enjoying a substantial reduction in all kinds of crime, including a dramatic drop in homicides. He won passage of a new law that expands the county's ethics office to probe government wrongdoing, a coda to the arrest and conviction of his predecessor Jack B. Johnson (D) on bribery and corruption charges. Baker's $50 million grant and loan fund to attract businesses is beginning to show results. He has secured a commitment from state officials for a $600 million regional hospital in Prince George's. But when it comes to the 120,000-student school system, Baker has been repeatedly frustrated. There have been five superintendents in 10 years, with the most recent departing in the summer. Test scores for many students continue to lag behind the rest of the state, despite some signs of improvement. "We do a lot of good things every day in the schools," Baker tells audiences. But we need to do them everywhere, every day. As he enters his third year in office - the year that he will probably be gearing up to run for reelection in 2014 - Baker thinks the success of the school system is crucial to his attempts to reposition the county as an economic powerhouse in the Washington region. The county executive technically has no role in supervising the school system - that is the job of the nine-member school board - but Baker has decided he cannot afford to hold back. He plans to be involved in selecting a superintendent and is searching for new academic programs and new ways to help students. "If we don't . . . then the rest of what we are doing is not working," he said in a recent interview. Upgrading the schools also means repairing crumbling buildings and boosting teacher pay, no small undertaking in the $1.6 billion system whose budget and per pupil spending is still less than what is spent by its more successful neighbors in Fairfax and Montgomery counties. Although Baker has secured increases in school spending from the County Council and the General Assembly in his two years in office, the schools are still stuck near the bottom in Maryland in student achievement. This year, there were months of political turmoil in the school board elections that nearly led to the ouster by voters of the incumbent school board chairwoman. The fourth superintendent in 10 years resigned.