Annapolis Middle

Bids for renovating South Shore Elementary School are $4 million higher than the amount the school system has to spend on the project, forcing administrators to re-evaluate the plan.Tonight, school board members will get their first look at their four choices: ask the County Council for more money and proceed with the renovation; call for a second round of bids; reduce the size of the project; demolish South Shore and replace it."Everybody's alarmed by this, but we're going back through the bids and finding out there's no market for reconstruction," said Greg Nourse, the school system's director of financial services.

Willard Mumford will gladly talk about engineering to anyone who will listen.This week, he has the attention of 20 county teachers and guidance counselors.And in August, he is looking for 30 students to listen to him talk about career opportunities in the field -- especially minorities and females.Most just call him "Will" when they refer to the tall, gray-haired, soft-spoken chairman of the engineering and technologiesdepartment at Anne Arundel Community College. And when not teaching,he's applying for grants to spread the word about engineering.

It wasn't quite New York's famous Shubert Theatre, but for one evening the cafeteria of Bates Middle School was filled with enough electricity to bring a bit of Broadway to Annapolis."

For the first time, Annapolis officials are planning to intervene in the school redistricting process.At issue is whether students should be bused past neighborhood schools to achieve racial balance, or whether they should attend the school nearest their homes -- even if that means the schools are not as racially diverse.City Council members plan to meet with the Board of Education Wednesday about Superintendent C. Berry Carter II's plan to redraw the school attendance boundaries of nine elementary, two middle and the single high school in the Annapolis area.

While the majority of the more than 4,300 Naval Academy midshipmen take advantage of their limited free time and sleep in on Saturday mornings, 98 of them are up discussing how to add negative numbers or construct sentences.The midshipmen are half of the Mids and Kids Saturday Tutorial Program. Just a little more than a month old, the program provides one-on-one tutoring for students at Georgetown East Elementary and Annapolis Middle schools."A number of us had been talking for a while, trying to figure out what we could do for the local community," said Lt. Delores Duncan-White, the director of the program.

Despite lobbying by the Anne Arundel school superintendent, the county's Police Department is unlikely to assign officers to any county middle schools next fall, county police officials say. Police Chief P. Thomas Shanahan is still developing the department's budget for the next fiscal year, but 31 positions are likely to remain vacant on the force, said police spokesman Sgt. Shawn Urbas. As a result, there are few additional resources to expand the school policing program. Superintendent Eric J. Smith, who had met with Shanahan, said he understands the decision and will explore other ways to improve security aside from officers, who are intended to head off problems and build relationships with students.

A few Anne Arundel County parents sent their children to school yesterday with their first assignment -- immunizations -- incomplete. School officials promptly sent them home.Jane Doyle, a school spokeswoman, said officials did not have a complete count of the number of students sent home yesterday, but they knew Friday that 2,000 students had not been properly immunized or did not have the documentation.That is an improvement over last year, when 5,600 students showed up on the first day without immunization records, Doyle said.

With today marking the start of a second semester in Anne Arundel County schools, here's a look back at an eventful first semester.State test resultsResults from the 1996-1997 Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) and SATs came out during the semester. While overall results of tests were lackluster, school officials adroitly found the good news in the disappointing figures.They pointed to:An increasing number of county schools rating satisfactory or excellent on the MSPAPs since 1993.

* ANNAPOLIS MIDDLE, Forest Drive, Annapolis 21403. Phone: 267-8658. Principal: Kevin Dennehy. CAC: Art Butler. PTA: Rose Kreiger. Approximate enrollment: 819* ARUNDEL MIDDLE. Higgins Drive at Hammonds Lane, Odenton 21113. Phone: 674-6900. Principal: Clifton Prince. CAC: Roylene Roberts. PTA: Priscilla Diacont. Projected enrollment: 516.* BATES MIDDLE, 701 Chase Ave. at Smith, Annapolis 21401. Phone: 263-0270. Principal: Sarah McGowan. CAC: Sandra Crosier. PTA: Julie Greene. Proj. enrollment: 590.* BROOKLYN PARK/LINDALE MIDDLE/JUNIOR, 200 Hammonds Lane, Baltimore 21225.

It only takes a word, like "whore" or "mother." Or a threat, like "watch your back." Sometimes a look, interpreted as critical, is enoughto touch off a fight.Whatever the reason -- and sometimes there's no reason -- students at Annapolis Middle School say fighting is anever-present part of their lives. Every day, many of them come to school ready to fight or fearing the possibility.Although some students say they try to avoid confrontations, a handful of students sitting in an empty classroom talking last week said they would fight if "pushed into it."