Baltimore School

Researchers hailed the Supreme Court ruling Wednesday that bans the patenting of human DNA, saying it would expand access to genetic testing for disease at lower cost to patients. In a unanimous decision, the justices said Myriad Genetics did not have exclusive rights to the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes that are linked to significantly greater risk for breast cancer and thus should not be the only company allowed to test for it. "Myriad did not create anything," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for his fellow justices.

While other city high school principals excitedly read off the names of colleges and universities their students will disperse to at the end of the school year, Denise Gordon fanned through a stack of acceptance letters with less enthusiasm. "New Era, Dunbar, Ben Franklin, Carver, Edmondson, Digital, Mervo - a lot of New Era," she read. Gordon, who has spent her eight years as a principal at Southside Academy, which closed its doors for good Wednesday, never thought she'd be sending her students to different high schools, faced with the school system's decision that they'd be better served somewhere else.

A historic Baltimore Catholic school will name its community center in honor of Bill and Camille Cosby, the biggest donors in the school's 184-year history and fierce champions of education, the school announced Friday. St. Frances Academy, which serves 162 primarily low-income high school students, will host the comedian, his wife and their relatives in a ceremony at the St. Frances Community Center on April 20. In addition to giving $2 million to St. Frances in 2005 to support its scholarship program, Camille Cosby also has a strong connection to the founders of the Baltimore school, having been educated by the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the oldest order of African-American nuns in the country, for seven years.

As Baltimore Board of School Commissioners conducts a national search for a new leader to replace outgoing schools CEO Andrés Alonso, it must consider is what further changes are needed to build on the reforms he initiated. Specifically, it needs to ask whether the improvements in school governance, attendance and teacher evaluation that were hallmarks of Mr. Alonso's tenure are by themselves sufficient to move the system to the next level, or whether a broader strategy is needed that takes into account not just what goes on inside the school building but also addresses the larger issues of poverty, violence and family instability in the communities students come from.

Grover L. McCrea Jr., a retired college administrator and former member of the Baltimore school board who advocated the "back-to-basics" movement in education, died Friday after a heart attack at his home in Northeast Baltimore.Mr. McCrea, who was 61, retired in 1986 from Coppin State College, where he had been director of urban leadership programs since 1971. For a time, he was also assistant to the dean of continuing education.In the 1970s, he was also a consultant for B.F. and M. Recruiters Association, an area management recruiting firm for industry.

We were very pleased to read about the Baltimore City Public Schools' well-deserved national recognition as "revitalized" and on "an upward trajectory" in "Baltimore's graduation rate: a success story still being written" (March 28). As the article makes clear, the Baltimore City Public Schools, under the leadership of CEO Andrés Alonso, have gone to extraordinary lengths to improve the quality of education, increase graduation rates, reduce expulsions and suspensions and develop robust partnerships with foundations, community organizations and other stakeholders.

When St. Frances Academy needed another $2 million to build its community center in East Baltimore, one nun turned to her "good friends and two of the very finest persons I know" — the Cosbys. Sister Mary Alice Chineworth, an Oblate Sister of Providence and one of the school's longest-serving teachers, called the couple. Camille Cosby said yes right away. Her husband, Bill, one of the country's best-known comedians, insisted repeatedly, amid much laughter at a dedication ceremony Friday, that he was not consulted.

A newly renovated health center at Tench Tilghman Elementary and Middle School in Baltimore has reopened to students and will include a doctor onsite once a week The health st uite will

School never closed this summer for about 30 Baltimore City middle-school students. They arrive at Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School with enthusiasm for a day that may be shorter and more laid-back, but still enhances their academic and athletic skills. These kids are reading books of their own choosing, writing in their personal journals, zipping through math calculations and working out on the basketball court. They spend two hours a day in an air-conditioned classroom and two in the gym — cooled only with fans — at the school on West Lexington Street, a few miles from downtown.

For a decade, the news from the city schools was good. Buildings might be dilapidated, deficits might bring schools to the brink of bankruptcy, and superintendents might be fired, but every summer, educators released test results standing next to charts that showed steady improvement. Baltimore was no longer the worst school system in the state. But for the past three years, progress — as measured by test scores — has virtually stalled. Critics of CEO Andrés Alonso say the lack of continued improvement shows that he has failed to make the nuts and bolts of teaching his focus.

In his typical rhyming style, Muhammad Ali might call it something like "a whopper of an opera. " The legendary boxer, who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, has inspired "Approaching Ali," a chamber opera with music by Carroll County native and Baltimore School for the Arts alum D.J. Sparr. The work is based on Davis Miller's 1996 book "The Tao of Muhammad Ali. " Contemporary political figures have ended up in operas, "Nixon in China" by John Adams being the most prominent example.

Norovirus was likely the culprit that sickened 200 students and nine staff members at Pot Spring Elementary in Timonium last week, Baltimore County health officials have found. About a third of the school's students were absent May 17 because of gastrointestinal symptoms, prompting a health department investigation. Preliminary lab tests performed by the county health department showed that norovirus was probably behind the symptoms, according to a letter the school's principal sent to parents this week.

Among the expenditures by the city school system that U.S. Department of Education auditors found inappropriate: $4,352 spent by two elementary schools for dinner cruises at Baltimore's Inner Harbor $2,413 spent on fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, biscuits, cookies and soda for 28 attendees at a PTA meeting to discuss a school's budget $1,336 spent to take 30 people to a theater performance downtown that included dinner, dancing and...

Unimpressed with the elementary school in her Baltimore neighborhood, Bobbi Macdonald set out to create her own. She founded the City Neighborhoods Foundation in 2003, the year her oldest daughter started kindergarten and the state of Maryland began allowing charter schools. Ten years later, the nonprofit is running three schools: City Neighbors Charter School, City Neighbors Hamilton and City Neighbors High School. All are known for student engagement and attendance rates that top 90 percent.

As the founder of KIPP Baltimore, which operates two high-performing public charter schools in the city, I am heartened and encouraged by our progress over the past six years under schools CEO Andrés Alonso. As I move to a new role as executive director of MarylandCAN - the Maryland Campaign for Achievement Now - I am hopeful that many of the policies and approaches that have driven this progress will be replicated in other Maryland school systems. But the work in Baltimore is far from over.

Why doesn't Baltimore's schools CEO need teaching experience, like other superintendents in the state? It was a question on the mind of many education observers last week, after hearing that the city's schools chief is not bound by the same requirements. It was also an issue of confusion for city school officials who, early in the day Tuesday, believed Tisha Edwards, 42 - who will soon become the city's interim schools CEO - would need to apply for a state waiver because while she has been a principal, she has never been a teacher.

Updated: Baltimore City police sent out a release around 2:30 p.m. informing that Guadalupe Sosa and Michael Carter, the two Baltimore School for the Arts students who went missing Wednesday, have been found safe and unharmed.    Original Post: Baltimore school officials are spreading word that two students from the Baltimore School for the Arts left the school Wednesday morning, and to date have not been seen or heard from...

Rachel Hilson , a 15-year-old sophomore at the Baltimore School for the Arts, has landed a recurring role on "The Good Wife," the CBS hit drama now in its second season. She debuts Tuesday as Nisa, a study partner and love interest for Zach Florrick (played by Graham Phillips ), the teenage son of Alicia Florrick (played by Julianna Margulies ). Hilson has already shot three episodes and just got word this week that she'll be shooting a fourth. Quite a big break for a young actress whose other credits are more along the lines of lower-school plays at McDonogh.

The reverberations from the departure of Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso will be felt nationally as well as locally. Six years ago, I was a member of the Baltimore school board that hired him. Our risky vision was to try to recruit a game-changer whose achievements would surpass those of the heralded superintendents in New York (Joel Klein, whom Mr. Alonso served as a deputy), Chicago (Arne Duncan) and D.C. (Michelle Rhee). What we sought was what we got, and then some. Mr. Alonso initiated wave after wave of reforms: higher test scores, higher graduation rate, extensive school choice, a nationally groundbreaking transformation of expectations for students with disabilities, a progressive teacher contract, a steep drop in expulsions and suspensions, a remarkable 10-year plan for school facilities, and more.

As many times as it rolls around, I never outgrow the FlowerMart, which opened Friday and runs through Saturday. It's held in May and timed to take advantage of the best part of Maryland's spring. Any event that draws so many families, especially babies in strollers, mothers and grandmothers, to a hallowed Baltimore neighborhood gets my vote, even if, truth be told, I am not much of crab cake fancier. Mount Vernon has long fascinated me. I was not long free of those baby carriages when I was taken along Charles Street and spied an exotic retail mix of first-floor and basement-level shops selling old maps, rare clocks, books, antiques or other items not found at Woolworth's.