Busing

The Howard County PTA Council wants the county school board to take another look at its policy of not providing buses for elementary school pupils who live less than a mile from schools -- a policy that parents say forces some children to walk along dangerous routes.The council soon will launch a survey at all county schools to determine the safety of children's walking paths, whether the paths need to be patrolled or whether all students should be bused. Older students ride buses if they live more than 1.5 miles from schools.

Riders used to seeing white, Connect-A-Ride buses along the G route could be confused by red and white vehicles at bus stops this week that have a CMRT logo emblazoned on the side. Central Maryland Regional Transit (formerly CTC), which manages the local bus system in Laurel and surrounding counties, has changed the bus service's logo, and the Connect-A-Ride brand is no more. CMRT officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Laurel Municipal Center April 3 to unveil the system's new logo and rolled out the first bus displaying the new design.

Principal Stephen Gibson, Three years ago, a group of parents from the Columbia neighborhood of Clemens Crossing pooled their money to hire buses that would transport more than 100 kids from older, more diverse Wilde Lake Middle School to the newer Lime Kiln Middle in Fulton. That unusual decision sparked an angry response from many in Columbia who thought the parents were taking advantage of Howard County's open-enrollment policy to run away from the educational and social problems that came with diversity.

J. Edward Naylor Sr., a retired Maryland Transit Administration employee who once had top seniority among his peers as a streetcar and bus operator, died of respiratory failure Nov. 29 at the Village of Harbor Point Assisted Living in Salisbury. The former Medfield-area resident was 95. Born in Upperco and raised in White Hall in Northern Baltimore County, he was the son of farmers Clearfield and Elsie Naylor. Family members said he attended Hereford High School and worked on neighboring farms as a young man. Mr. Naylor moved to Baltimore and took a job at the Greenspring Dairy in 1937.

Twenty-four years ago this spring, white parents and students picketed Baltimore's school board with signs that read "We're staying at our schools: No to busing."A generation later, some of the students who were bused to desegregate schools are now parents. And they are complaining about the issue of busing their elementary schoolchildren.But this time, it is a protest of a different sort: Some white parents in Carrollton Ridge desperately want their children to stay at the primarily black school they are being bused to, bypassing a neighborhood school.

Wayne K. Curry remembers the summer 38 years ago when his father told him and his brother Daryl they would be leaving their all-black elementary school for the all-white school closer to home."

After a quarter century of court-ordered busing, Prince George's County officials believe they have the evidence to persuade a federal judge to relinquish control of their school system.In their hands is a report by four education experts that concludes busing no longer serves a purpose in a school system that has gone from three-quarters white to three-quarters black.School officials have done everything possible to end discrimination against black students, the experts said. Further, busing students from their neighborhoods to someone else's is doing little to erase segregation, and in some cases may be making it worse.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago this winter, several of us from The Sun trooped down to Prince George's County to cover what would be the biggest Maryland education story of 1973: sweeping court-ordered busing.It was a big story because widespread busing hadn't been attempted in the suburbs of the North -- well, Prince George's is south of the Mason-Dixon Line but still a relatively sophisticated suburban district enrolling, among others, the children of many federal workers.Prince George's schools then were 75 percent white, and many white parents raised a ruckus for months, even years, after the day in late January that the buses first rolled.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - On both sides of the issue, they say the same thing: It's not about race. But with a group of white parents heading to federal court today seeking to halt busing and other school integration measures, it is perhaps more accurate to say this: It is about race, but it's not only about race. "What Charlotte is struggling with," says Ricky Woods, senior pastor of the city's oldest black Baptist congregation, "is the moral soul of its community." The parents' lawsuit has touched a deep nerve here, tapping into the city's sense of both its past and its future.

Rosemary Gunning,92, who parlayed activism against mandatory school busing into a leadership role in New York's fledgling Conservative Party, died Sunday in Roslyn, N.Y.Pub Date: 10/08/97

Automated speed cameras, installed around area schools three years ago with the goal of punishing dangerous drivers and making the streets safer for children, have caught hundreds of school buses speeding near the schools they serve, often with children aboard, a Baltimore Sun analysis has found. Privately owned buses have received at least 800 automated speed citations in Baltimore City, while city-owned buses have accumulated more than 50, records show. And Baltimore County public school buses have triggered speed cameras more than 100 times over the past two years.

The unblinking eye of the camera is increasingly all around us. On the street corner, inside the convenience store, in office building lobbies - not to mention in the hands of everyone with a cellphone. So it's not surprising that the Maryland Transit Administration's plan to activate microphones on buses is raising concerns about privacy. But while there is a good conversation to be had about the slippery slope of lost privacy in Baltimore and elsewhere, this doesn't appear to be the place to draw the line.

What a superb idea it is to monitor conversations on buses! ("MTA is recording bus conversations," Oct. 18.) Everyone understands that the kind of people who ride buses can't be trusted. The shame is that we haven't yet carried the idea far enough. Obviously, if the kind of people who ride buses should be monitored, we should also monitor those who ride light rail. And people who ride in airplanes can't be trusted, as 9/11 and numerous hijackings have demonstrated. In fact, security measures in airports would be greatly helped if we recorded all the conversations in airports, and, of course, we should extend the policies to trains and train stations.

Plans to get mass transit to the communities north of Pennsylvania Station are proceeding on parallel tracks. A one-year-old, grass-roots campaign to establish streetcar service along the Charles Street corridor and south to the Inner Harbor is still at the door-knocking, leaflet-passing stage. Meanwhile, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is driving the bus - figuratively - to extend the Charm City Circulator's Purple Line from the train station to 33rd Street. She made the proposal part of her State of the City address in February and reiterated her support last week at a Charles Village community meeting.

Shuttle buses will replace light rail trains at five stations north of Timonium from May 5 to about June 30 as workers upgrade crossings in Hunt Valley. Riders who use the Warren Road, Gilroy Road, McCormick Road, Pepper Road and Hunt Valley stations should either board buses or bypass the closures and park at the 850-car space Timonium Road station, the Maryland Transit Administration said Thursday. Crews will replace worn track and shore up rail foundations — the first major work on the section since it opened in 1997.

Three school buses crashed into one another Monday afternoon in Upper Marlboro, sending 34 high schoolers to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries. Paramedics triaged 75 students on the scene, according to Prince George's County Fire and Emergency Medical Services spokesman Mark Brady. The buses had just left Frederick Douglass High School and were loaded with teenagers headed home when they rear-ended one another at a low speed, Brady said in a news release. The buses were in line at a traffic light on the 7600 block of Croom Road, near Route 301. "All injuries are considered very minor," the release said, adding that parents of the transported children were notified.

Sociologist James S. Coleman had more than his allotted 15 minutes of fame. But when he died in Chicago 10 days ago, the news trickled out and found its way to obituary pages deep within the nation's newspapers.Had Dr. Coleman died a quarter of a century earlier, when he was head of the social relations department at the Johns Hopkins University and the chief author of the 1966 "Coleman Report," the news would have recommended itself immediately to front pages.In those days, the Hopkins professor was reviled in the South, then undergoing massive school desegregation, much of it relying on the Coleman Report as a rationale for busing to achieve racial balance.

Editor: I read the nice article regarding the Teal Line linking transit bus service between Harford and Cecil counties. I must point out there is a rather glaring omission in that article. There is no mention regarding the personal dedication and long-standing efforts by Mr. Kevin Racine, a Harford County citizen and resident of Havre de Grace. Mr. Racine has been a relentless citizen advocate on behalf of the public for bus and rail transit connections. I believe it is through his continuous and tireless efforts over the years that this day has finally come for us all. He has personally ridden most of the region's bus lines and has attended countless meetings throughout the East Coast.

I read with great interest your recent editorial ("Flashing lights ignored," Oct. 6) on Baltimore County drivers ignoring stopped school buses. The primary reason for the high number of violators reported may be that Baltimore County Public School (BCPS) bus drivers have had lots of practice recording violators. This is one of the most important pieces of the problem. BCPS, unlike almost every school district in the country, does not use the flashing red lights as we were always taught in drivers' education class.