Abell Foundation

The last time Jon Hyman led a company, he helped turn the golf industry on its head, introducing plastic cleats to replace metal spikes. Now, he's planning a revolution for a similarly staid business: concrete. "This is not a very exciting industry, but we've been able to do things differently," said Hyman, who is chief executive officer of Baltimore-based CeraTech Inc. CeraTech has a technology that seeks to replace the way that cement has been made for nearly 200 years, since English inventor Joseph Aspdin mixed chalk and clay and heated it in a kiln to produce what is now widely known as Portland cement.

A small charter school serving poor children in Northwest Baltimore has transformed students' academic careers, turning low-performers into some of the city's highest scorers on reading and math tests, while their peers in neighboring schools have continued to lag behind, according to a new study. Of students who started at KIPP Ujima Village Academy in fifth grade in 2002 and stayed for four years, 100 percent passed the state's eighth-grade math test, compared with 19 percent in the control group, a Johns Hopkins University education researcher found.

Myra Williamson is back home. She's moving into a house just around the corner from where she grew up - and where, not so coincidentally, her downward spiral began. "I spent most of my life in this community," Williamson said as she prepared to move into a newly refurbished home at Monroe and Lexington streets. "I became addicted here." She had to leave town about 10 years ago to get the kind of drug treatment she felt she needed, but today, Williamson will celebrate the opening of a residential facility in which she will help others fight their own addictions - without leaving the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.

For nearly a quarter-century, Mike Drocella has made a living amid the steamy furnaces at the Carr Lowrey Glass Co. on the banks of the Patapsco River, just like his father before him.Enduring as it had been, Drocella's was a way of life under threat -- a threat that grew more ominous last year as the 110-year-old company, lagging behind its competition, struggled to find a buyer.That is, until an unlikely investor entered the picture: Baltimore's Abell Foundation.Recruiting partners to help manage the investment and the company, the nonprofit foundation put up $7 million to buy Carr Lowrey last year.

Compared with their peers in the region, Baltimore public school students have far fewer chances to take the most rigorous high school courses often used for college credit, according to an Abell Foundation report.Only four of the 17 high schools offered the courses, and less than 1 percent of the students -- 162 -- attended classes in such areas as chemistry, English literature, German and calculus.In Baltimore County, however, the courses are offered in every high school.The Abell Foundation concluded that the lack of academic rigor in the city's public high schools is an example of how the system focuses on its low-achieving students while ignoring those who are gifted.

A pioneering program that educates Baltimore youths in Kenya had to send nearly half its pupils back to restore order after a fall semester marked by staff unrest, racial tensions and misbehavior that escalated into a violent brawl.The disorder at the Baraka School, the biggest setback since it was conceived as a life-changing experience for inner-city boys, has worried parents and forced school officials to examine staffing and admissions procedures.Two consultants have been dispatched by the Abell Foundation, which recruits students from public schools for the 4-year-old program it created and finances.

A struggling, 110-year-old glass manufacturer that employs 300 will remain open in Baltimore after the Abell Foundation made an undisclosed investment to save it.The Carr-Lowrey Glass Co., which makes glass containers for cosmetics and perfumes at a plant at 2201 Kloman St., had been searching for a buyer for months before the Abell Foundation stepped in, said K. Wayne Long, vice chairman of the company's board."

Two private organizations announced separate initiatives yesterday to pay for programs designed to revamp the Baltimore Police Department, reduce crime and cut the city's homicides substantially by the end of 2002.The Abell Foundation is paying $140,000 to a team headed by crime consultants Jack Maple and John Linder to study police operations and implement a new crime-fighting strategy. The consultants are already at work at the behest of Mayor-elect Martin O'Malley.The Greater Baltimore Committee -- a group of business leaders who challenged the community to cut the city's annual 300-plus homicides in half in two years -- is giving the city's Safe and Sound Campaign $145,000 to pay for a special prosecutor and surveillance equipment.

Baltimore's public schools have done a poor job of attracting the best college graduates to teach in the school system and often have left them to flounder without the guidance of experienced teachers, according to an Abell Foundation report.While suburban school systems offer teaching contracts to the best prospects among graduating college seniors as early as February, city schools typically hire in late May or June.The study found that the city schools' personnel office appears overwhelmed and disorganized.

Sisters will be sisters: competing, fighting, wearing each others' clothes without permission. And even vying for the same scholarship.The latter led to a small measure of tension around the Khatib family's Charles Village household recently when sisters Alwafaa, 16, Asmaa, 11, and her twin, Bushraa, each applied for a $1,000 scholarship from the Carson Scholars Fund, a program started in 1996 by Dr. Ben Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns...

John R. "Jack" Yates of Charles Village was killed Aug. 4, when his bicycle hit a truck near downtown. Charles G. "Boots" Pratt of Randallstown was killed Aug. 9, when a gunman shot him in a parking lot in Cherry Hill. Yates was 67, had been busy working on his third master's degree, and had two children and six grandchildren. Pratt was 18, had been busy working with the Hillside street gang, according to police, and had just escaped an attempted-murder charge because a witness recanted.

Three years ago, the city of Kalamazoo, Mich., was beset by shrinking public school enrollments, high dropout rates and a loss of manufacturing jobs that crippled efforts at economic development. The city's response: Rally local businesses and foundations to create a new kind of scholarship program that guarantees free college tuition to every public school student in the city, regardless of race or income. The program, known as Promise, aimed to attract middle-class families and jobs back to the city, keep the best students in state schools and encourage academic achievement at both the secondary and college levels.

City jurors are right to show skepticism Yet again on Sunday, The Baltimore Sun covered the Abell Foundation's study on disparities in rulings between Baltimore juries and their counterparts in surrounding counties ("Study finding local jury disparity is released," Sept. 7). The study not only identified differences in verdicts but went on to the make the shocking proposal that we should consider a regional jury pool. But differences don't necessarily indicate problems; distinct approaches more often than not lead to the right answer.

Witness intimidation in Baltimore had become such a threat to prosecuting criminals that State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy led a campaign to better protect witnesses. She has personally delivered copies of the bootleg video Stop Snitchin' to state lawmakers to emphasize the seriousness of the problem. Mrs. Jessamy has had to rely on federal prosecutors to go after some accused murderers and accomplices whom city juries just won't convict. Increasingly, her prosecutors have faced tough odds in trying to convict criminals.

Jury study targets very real problem According to reporter Julie Bykowicz's disturbing article on the findings of the Abell Foundation's jury study, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy attacked the study as "divisive" and demanded that its recommendations be changed ("Jury study raises hackles in city," Aug. 18). The Abell Foundation report found that in the three Maryland counties it studied, 45 percent of defendants in jury trials were convicted and 27 percent were acquitted.

Having gratefully escaped being seated on a Baltimore City jury despite multiple summonses for duty, I would have to agree with what Groucho Marx said in a different context: He wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. City juries have a less than enviable reputation. You've heard the complaints no doubt, or grumbled a few yourself: Oh, they won't convict anyone. They're made up largely of blacks, and they don't want to send another brother to prison. It's jury nullification, doncha know?

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The Freedom Tower at Ground Zero. The World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington. Some of the highest-profile construction projects in the country have resulted from international design competitions such as the one the University of Baltimore plans to hold for its new law center. University officials are scheduled to announce today that they are working with the Abell Foundation to hold a $150,000 competition to select the architect, landscape architect and other design consultants for a $107 million law center.

With help from the Abell Foundation, the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore has received a $1.2 million bank credit it needs to get through the next two months without firing employees and stiffing vendors, officials said. Zoo officials do not expect to spend the entire line of credit from PNC Bank because revenues have improved since the March birth of an elephant -- whose name will be unveiled at his public debut Saturday. And officials are optimistic that a baby camel's visit in May will continue to boost attendance.

Myra Williamson is back home. She's moving into a house just around the corner from where she grew up - and where, not so coincidentally, her downward spiral began. "I spent most of my life in this community," Williamson said as she prepared to move into a newly refurbished home at Monroe and Lexington streets. "I became addicted here." She had to leave town about 10 years ago to get the kind of drug treatment she felt she needed, but today, Williamson will celebrate the opening of a residential facility in which she will help others fight their own addictions - without leaving the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.

A scathing report from The Abell Foundation on public housing in Baltimore suggests that the city's housing authority has "abandoned its mission to house the poor" by focusing on the demolition of properties instead of providing new housing. The report, to be published today on The Abell Foundation's Web site, says the number of occupied public housing units in the city has declined by 42 percent in the past 15 years - from 16,525 to 9,625. The report says the authority's plans for new housing are "unclear."