Alternative School

The Baltimore school system will "stretch" the criteria used to place disruptive students at its alternative middle school, which should increase its enrollment and remove more troubled children from regular schools, Superintendent Walter G. Amprey said yesterday.Responding to criticisms voiced by City Council members during a public hearing last month, he revised his previous position that Woodbourne Academy would be limited to those students whose behavior problems were most serious or anti-social.

Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso's resignation at the end of this academic year is a major blow to a city whose trajectory he helped change. There can be little doubt that the energetic and rapid reforms he implemented in the city's long-struggling school system have set the stage for broader renewal and growth in Baltimore. But city leaders also need to look on his departure as a tremendous opportunity, a chance to bring in a new superintendent who will build on Mr. Alonso's successes.

Campfield Elementary School, closed nine years ago because of declining enrollment and maintained by Baltimore County since, has been returned to the Baltimore County school system, which will expand its alternative middle school there.The school, on Alter Avenue in the Pikesville area, has housed the alternative school since September, when it opened with a capacity of 45 students. Next school year, Campfield will be able to accommodate 100 students from 10 middle schools in the southwest and northwest areas of the county.

When John Thompson was growing up in a blue-collar area of Pittsburgh, he knew he likely wouldn't become a third-generation steelworker. Buoyed by his father's belief that teaching was an important profession, he took a circuitous route toward education - and he discovered a drive and desire to help the underprivileged and underserved. Currently, Thompson is assistant principal at Phoenix Center Annapolis, the state's only school that serves students with disabilities from kindergarten through the 12th grade.

The alternative high school that Anne Arundel County educators want to open next year for disruptive teen-agers probably will be housed in a county-owned building at the state complex in Crownsville.County officials, who support the creation of the alternative school, are offering the school system free use of one of the three buildings at the campus off Generals Highway.Ironically, for 15 years the Crownsville complex housed another county program for problem youths -- the Careers Center vocational program for troubled teen-agers, which fell victim to the budget ax in 1993.

Howard County Schools Superintendent Michael E. Hickey has proposed a $35.48 million capital budget for next year that includes construction of an alternative school for troubled students and the planning of a new high school in Fulton to open by fall of 2002.The building plan, released yesterday and presented to the school board, also proposes constructing an Ellicott City middle school by 2004 and many additions, replacements or renovations to county schools over the next decade.Officials predict that the school system will have 6,732 new students in the next 10 years, a 17 percent increase.

"I don't need no caning," said Tyrone.Tyrone is a young man of indeterminate age. He says he's 13. His teacher says he's 15. He looks 16, but at that legal age for rTC dropping out of school, he probably wouldn't be in this high-ceilinged double classroom on the fourth floor of Sojourner-Douglass College in East Baltimore. He'd be on the street.With 21 other young men and a couple of young ladies, Tyrone is enrolled in the Tri-School Alternative Project, an effort by three city public middle schools -- Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Dunbar and Lombard -- to remove their worst behavior cases from home schools and subject them to a month of training and counseling about civilized behavior, combined with a dose of rudimentary academics.

For most of the past eight years, Dale Grimes has had his own classroom at the Rosedale Center alternative school. Starting today, he'll have to share. A second alternative school, the Inverness Center, completed a move from its Dundalk facility to the Rosedale Center on Friday. Baltimore County school system officials say the move was necessary because of problems with Inverness' aging building. Each school, geared for students with behavioral problems and other challenges, offers a half-day program.

Students at Baltimore County's six alternative middle and high schools have serious reading problems but only one specialist to help them improve -- an alarming situation that has forced the Board of Education to consider hiring reading specialists at each school next year."

Baltimore education officials reversed course last night and said that an alternative school in Hampden that was facing closure because its funding had been cut will get the money it needs to stay open after all. Chief Academic Officer Cassandra W. Jones said that the Learning Cooperative, a school for 24 teen-age students who have dropped out or failed grades at regular city public schools, will get about $140,000 for the current year -- the same amount...

It began as many confrontations between students do: with a hard stare between two passing strangers, according to Toni Holmes, a senior at an Ellicott City alternative school. One of the girls told a friend, "I don't like her. " Snide remarks about clothing and appearance went back and forth, and then other girls chimed in. Soon, unexplained yet simmering enmity exploded into a series of face-to-face confrontations among about 20 girls at the Homewood Center. Teachers got hurt preventing the arguments from becoming physical, and hallways were often deemed unsafe.

At the Baltimore premiere of "Precious," Jacqueline Robarge, the founder of Power Inside, a support group for women in jail or at risk outside, and Adam Rosenberg, executive director of Baltimore Child Abuse Center, declared that the domestic atrocities depicted in the film occur every day - and that facing them squarely provides hope as well as release. This movie proves them right. In the end, it's cathartic and exhilarating. Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe is an emotional lodestone as Precious, an obese teenager whose life is filled with horror.

The Chesapeake Alternative School in South Baltimore will remain open for the rest of the school year after being assured by the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services on Tuesday that there had been a misunderstanding about funding cuts. Chesapeake, a nonprofit that teaches students who have been referred to Juvenile Services, had issued a news release saying it would close its doors Friday after funding had been cut from $1.3 million annually to $350,000. The school serves about 40 students who often have a history in the juvenile justice system and have gotten into trouble for drugs or theft.

Baltimore's school board voted 5-2 Tuesday night to adopt a policy that allows students to be permanently expelled for setting fires or other violent acts that threaten the safety of staff and students. The vote came after months of public comment and haggling over the details of the policy. In the end, the board and schools CEO Andr?s Alonso compromised. Alonso retained his authority to permanently expel students, but under more narrow circumstances and with a greater weight given to the student's home life and experiences, and right to due process.

Everard Grant knows his 16-year-old stepson made a huge mistake when he lit a poster on fire at his Baltimore high school. But he doesn't think he deserves to be shut out of the city's public schools forever. The boy, Tyrone Jamison, is one of 34 students who have been permanently expelled from Baltimore schools this academic year. That number has increased drastically over previous years because of a decision by schools chief Andr?s Alonso to impose the most severe punishment for those caught committing arson or detonating explosives.

Staff and parents at failing schools slated for closure said at a hearing Saturday that they wished their schools had been given the resources to succeed before being shut down. About 50 people, a few dozen of them school system administrators required to attend, turned out for the second and final hearing on a major school reorganization plan that is subject to an April 28 vote by the board of education. Some speakers complained that the hearings were held at inconvenient locations for residents of the west side, where many of the changes would occur.

The stage - if you can call a patchwork of 6-inch risers a stage - was set up in the school's "gymteria," a room that is part gymnasium, part cafeteria. A computer cart covered with a white paper tablecloth served as a diploma table. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the colors of caps and gowns worn by the graduates. But none of that mattered. The hundreds of parents and cousins, aunts and uncles, siblings, teachers and counselors who crowded into the Gateway School on Tuesday night came for one reason: to see 24 students - many of whom never expected to make it through high school - receive diplomas.

In the first days of her last year of high school, 16-year-old Brittany Decker hugged her teachers - and mouthed off to them. Sometimes scowling and sullen, the girl who already had been kicked out of three Carroll County high schools swept notebooks from her desk to the floor and punched lockers in frustration. Piercings hugged the arch of her eyebrow and flashed from her nose and tongue. Nine months later, Brittany rolls her eyes in disgust when friends act up. She earned an A and B in her first community college classes this semester and plans to apply next year to four-year, Christian colleges.