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.

There seems to be a sneaky move afoot on the part of direct mail marketers and purveyors of things by catalog.It is no longer enough to tease us with nearly irresistible temptation for months before Christmas; now they've put it all on sale and are running it up the flagpole again -- and like Pavlov's dog, we salute, or at least start to.A quick scan of the turned down pages in the 13 catalogs that have come since Jan. 1 reveals $989.95 in things that caught my eye, either for myself, my home, or for presents -- and that doesn't count instances where there were six or seven things on a page (Metropolitan Museum)

Five Annapolis Middle School students were charged with food poisoning after serving a batch of just-baked cookies sprinkled with liquid dish detergent to the principal, a teacher and some fellow students.The eighth-graders, apparently dissatisfied with how their home economics class assignment had turned out, decided to squirt dish washing liquid on the cookies and offer them to unsuspecting students and teachers, officials said."One of the students thought that if they swallowed the tainted cookies, bubbles would come from the mouths of the people that ate them," Anne Arundel County Lt. Ray A. Pearson said.

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.

Screaming hordes of teen-agers generally reserve their yells for rap artists and television teen idols.But yesterday, students at Annapolis High and Annapolis Middle schools gave their vocal chords a workout for a football coach.Bill Belichick, head coach of the Cleveland Browns and a graduate of Annapolis High School, visited to encourage students to stay in school and stay away from drugs.Shaking hands and signing at least 100 autographs, Mr. Belichick made his first stop yesterday at his alma mater.

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.

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."

* 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.

At Annapolis Middle, Dennehy said three weapons were confiscated this year -- a BB gun, a knife and a "look-alike" fake gun. The three students involved were expelled, and two appealed, asking to be readmitted.One is now at a county school for students with behavior problems, but the other -- the student who brought the BB gun -- is back at Annapolis Middle, only 2 1/2 months after his expulsion.County policy on school discipline doesn't explicitly deal with weapons or fighting, but lists six types of behavior that could resultin suspension or expulsion, including behavior that "disrupts the program of instruction" or "threatens the health, safety or welfare of others."

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."