The school year begins in Carroll County tomorrow with a new middle school, 190 new students, 151 new teachers and minor improvements in other schools.
Shiloh Middle School in Hampstead -- a $15 million, state-of-the-art facility-- will house 750 students to help ease crowding in North Carroll.
The school is modeled after South Carroll's Oklahoma Middle, but with some modifications, including larger lockers, straighter halls and a layout that makes full use of available space, said Principal Tom Hill.
"It really is designed for middle school teaching. It is technologically based, but not just with computers," he said. "There are a lot of things to help the students succeed."
The school has 48 teachers and 12 support staff. Jackie Moore is assistant principal.
"The No. 1 strength of the school is its students, teachers and staff," Hill said. "It's the people in the building that really make the school."
Other schools will open tomorrow with improvements, ranging from a $1.7 million media center at Sykesville Middle School to new carpeting and classroom reconfigurations at others, Carroll officials said.
The 27,685-student system also will have an interim superintendent, Charles I. Ecker, a former Howard County executive and former Carroll school teacher and administrator.
He replaces William H. Hyde, who retired last month.
The salaries of 13 new teachers will be paid with $600,000 in state and federal grants. The grants also cover instructional materials and staff development, said Brenda Bowers, a school spokeswoman.
At North Carroll High, offices were renovated, and several schools received new carpeting, classroom reconfigurations and overall spruce-ups that occur every summer, said Vernon F. Smith Jr., assistant superintendent of administration.
Mount Airy Elementary School has a new portable classroom after parents objected to a proposal to transfer some pupils to ease crowding.
"One of the initial recommendations of the Long Range Facilities Planning Committee was to make a boundary adjustment and shift some of the students from Mount Airy to Winfield," said Kathleen Sanner, school support services director. "But there was such a huge public outcry that they backed away from that."
She said the committee decided to add the portable classroom to make space for all the pupils.
Also crowded are Sykesville and Oklahoma Road middle schools and Liberty and Westminster high schools, Bowers said.
Crowding will be alleviated when the new Eldersburg and Westminster area high schools open. Leadership teams that include principals have been chosen for Century High School in Eldersburg and the new Westminster-area high school, which has not been named.
Although the high schools won't open their doors until next year and 2002, respectively, a committee of teachers and administrators is working to create smaller learning clusters of students with common interests, Smith said.
Sun staff writer Jennifer McMenamin contributed to this article.
