The lucky ones heard their numbers called early.
Not only could those first-announced winners beam with pride about being one of the first 80 students who will attend the SEED School of Maryland, but they also did not have to agonize in their chairs any longer, watching the white lottery balls tumble in gilded cages - the numbered balls representing dreams for all and disappointment for many.
Yesterday morning, the founders of the nation's first public boarding school, which opened 10 years ago in Washington, D.C., held the inaugural lottery to fill the slots for the Baltimore-based second location, which will open its doors in August to disadvantaged youths from all over the state.
More than 300 students applied from the city, the suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, the Eastern Shore, and Western and Southern Maryland. Families traveled to the College of Notre Dame of Maryland to see if their child's number would be called.
Their reasons differed, but the underlying theme was the same: The SEED School - with its small class sizes, academically rigorous courses and impressive college admissions record - offered them a way out of the crowded schools and unforgiving neighborhoods they came from.
"This is the answer to a prayer," said a joyous Evelyn Collins of Randallstown, just after her grandson's number was called. His was the third number announced, but Nos. 1 and 2 were not in the audience to squeal the way Collins did or jump and wave like her grandson, Lucas Gutierrez, did.
The boarding school, funded mostly by the state, will offer a tuition-free, college preparatory education on the campus of the former Southwestern High School. It will open with a class of 80 sixth-graders, and add a grade each year through 12th. It is designed to serve students who live in "under-resourced" communities and are not performing to their potential. Organizers said many are likely to be low-income.
Jumping, yelping, cheering and hugging were in no short supply yesterday during the first few minutes of the lottery. But midway through, other activities became more prevalent: hand-holding, rocking, foot-tapping and, all throughout the too-warm auditorium, silent praying.
Carolyn Tenai of Lansdowne and her son Elijah Anthony Johnson Jr. clasped hands and put their heads together, willing the lottery ball with No. 91 to free itself from the pack. "If we get it," Tenai vowed, "I'll probably pass out on the floor."
