Adams Park

The Anne Arundel County school board's promise to reopen Adams Park Elementary School by 1997 appears to be unraveling, partly from logistical problems and lack of money, and partly because it may violate federal desegregation guidelines.By reopening Adams Park, school officials would create a predominantly black school at the request of the parents of students who would attend it, said Thomas Rhoades, director of the school system's management and information systems and liaison to the countywide redistricting committee.

The best days Rachel H. Brown and Yvonne G. Smith ever had as teachers came in the 1960s at the Adams Park Elementary School in Annapolis.Their students were interested in learning, they said, and teachers would stay late into the evenings to prepare the lessons.As they sat in the basement of the Stanton Center on West Washington Street Saturday afternoon, waiting for the start of an awards ceremony for the Adams Park Alumni Association, they couldn't help but remember the old times."It was really beautiful," said Ms. Brown, 80, who was the school's assistant principal from 1955 to 1966, the year it was integrated.

Adams Park Elementary School will again have students and will reopen no later than 1997.In response to an outpouring of support from parents and community members, the Anne Arundel County school board voted 5-2 last night to reopen Adams Park and to reject the school superintendent's plan to redraw school boundaries in the Annapolis area.The plan approved by the board was a compromise crafted by a coalition of Citizens Advisory Committees in the Adams Park area.The superintendent's proposal was created to develop neighborhood schools so that students would attend the school closest to their home.

Annapolis community activists are calling for reopening Adams Park Elementary and accusing officials of shutting them out of the process of redrawing school attendance boundaries.A coalition of black community organizations announced Friday that it would hold a rally at 2 p.m. today at Adams Park Elementary to drum up support for a redistricting plan that would include reopening the school at Clay and Glenwood streets."Our position is that all kids should have equal opportunity and access to opportunity in the educational system," Orlie Reid, co-chairman of the Educational Equity Committee for Community Relations, said at a press briefing Friday at the Mount Olive A.M.E.

Hoping to stop having children bused to schools outside their community, parents rallied yesterday to try to get a closed elementary school reopened in a black neighborhood.Proponents of opening the former Adams Park Elementary School, which now serves as a learning center for troubled youths, said busing breaks up their community and keeps parents from getting involved in education."For 20 years, we've been integrating schools by any means necessary," said Carlesa Finney, who grew up in the Clay Street area.