Baltimore ? Four firefighters and a fire truck are stationed outside Walbrook High School every day. The chances are good they are going to be needed.

Two months into the school year, Baltimore’s public schools have been hit with at least 76 fires — most of them small, most of them set by students — compared with 168 in all of last year. Walbrook High alone has reported about 20 blazes, versus 24 in 2003-04.

“I’ve never seen it this bad before,” said math teacher Eugene Chong Qui, who has taught in the city school system for eight years. “I don’t know what it stems from, but it’s systemic. It really seems as if the students are so far gone out of their minds, they’ll do anything for attention.”

In a school system struggling with a $58 million deficit, some say the surge in fires is alarming evidence of deeper problems — staff shortages, cutbacks in extracurricular activities, overcrowded classrooms and rising alienation among the 95,000 students.

So far, the fires have caused little damage and no serious injuries. But across the city, a pattern has emerged: Firefighters get a call about a fire in a trash can or locker, a bathroom or stairwell; the school is evacuated, and students stream outside. With so many people in one place, violence sometimes follows; school usually is canceled.

On Oct. 20 alone, firefighters received more than 10 calls from Baltimore schools about deliberately set fires.

So far, there have been 61 fire-related arrests, compared with 144 last year, said city fire spokesman Kevin Cartwright.

The Fire Department has posted a reward for information about those responsible and has stationed four-person crews at three high schools as a deterrent and to enable firefighters to get to the scene more quickly. Also, the school board last month voted to spend $1.5 million to enable 15 schools to hire more hall monitors and security officers.

Fire officials have encouraged teachers to patrol in or around bathrooms, stairwells and empty lockers between classes. And school officials have been talking with parents to try to put a stop to the fires and other troublemaking.

A fire truck is stationed outside Baltimore's Walbrook High School, where. about 20 fires have been set this year. School officials decided not to evacuate the building during the last several fires because of the fights between students outside and lost instruction time.

“We are asking all of those concerned about the city that they join us, help us, work with us we work to create better, safe schools,” school board chairwoman Patricia Welch said last month. “We can’t do it by ourselves.”

At Walbrook High, in the city’s working-class West Baltimore section, 16-year-old junior Christopher Spruill said students are setting the fires to get out of class.

“They want to be out on the corner instead of getting an education,” he said. He said students were too afraid to speak up, reward or not: “People know who’s doing it, they’re just not saying.”

Part of the problem, said Bebe Verdery, education director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, is that officials, trying to fix the financial crisis, have increased class sizes — 40 or more in some classrooms — and cut staff — more than 1,000 people last year, with 250 fewer teachers.

“You have a net reduction of the adults who are able to supervise students,” Verdery said. “When you combine that with the increased class sizes, the schools seem much less capable of controlling the violence and the fire-setting.”

In August, a judge ordered the city and state to put an additional $30 million to $45 million into the Baltimore schools after the ACLU argued the system’s plan to solve its financial crisis hurt the quality of education. But the state appealed, and the money has not been released.