Calvert School

The eighth-grade rappers who make up the wildly popular group Kris Kross will be taking a bit of Baltimore with them on their 29-city concert tour.Chris Kelly, half of the duo that has young fans wearing their pants baggy and backward, has enrolled in the Calvert School's home-instruction program. In town for the tour's debut last night, the 14-year-old also visited the North Baltimore school yesterday afternoon."It's all right. It's cool," Chris said in that taciturn adolescent style when asked about his new school.

Calvert School officials, intent on sealing a sensitive deal with the residents of apartments at 4300 N. Charles St. by Monday, say they hope a morning meeting today will finalize the terms of the tenants' departure and compensation for displacement from their North Baltimore homes. The compensation package on the bargaining table stipulates that all residents leave their homes by the end of August and involves a lump sum of about $500,000 to be divided equally among the 58 units occupied as of March 1, both sides said.

A Guilford Association official said last night that the neighborhood group has agreed to support the Calvert School's expansion plan in return for limits on enrollment and growth. The 25-year agreement appears to strengthen the school's proposal to demolish several apartment buildings at 4300 N. Charles St. to build a middle school and two large playing fields. Howard M. Freidel, a real estate lawyer and president of the Guilford group, said that under the terms of the "stabilizing" agreement, only a middle school, and not an upper school, will be built.

As residents of a North Baltimore apartment complex prepare to meet tonight with officials from the Calvert School who want to buy their building for a school expansion, they'll have to decide whether to pursue a more aggressive strategy to save their homes. A lawyer told a group of Tuscany-Canterbury apartment residents last week that they should publicize their plight as a possible strategy to block a pending sale of their building, 4300 N. Charles St. Lawyer John C. Murphy told them to spread the word of the "pain and heartache" involved in the transaction, which would entail tearing down the brick apartments for a middle school and playing fields.

The Calvert School, one of Baltimore's oldest and most prestigious private schools, intends to extend its cherished traditions and curriculum a little longer. After decades of resisting the temptation to add students and classes, the small school in North Baltimore announced big plans last week to expand to the seventh and eighth grades. "We think it will make us a stronger school overall," said headmaster Merrill S. Hall III. "The demand for middle school students is ever expanding. The crunch in independent middle schools is so great, we need to give our own students, and other city and county students, another alternative."

The conflict over Calvert School's expansion appears headed for resolution today as the North Baltimore private school goes before the city planning commission armed with what it badly needs to win design approval: an agreement from the Tuscany-Canterbury Neighborhood Association not to oppose the project. Robert J. Mathias, a lawyer and newly elected president of Calvert's board of trustees, said yesterday that he hoped the agreement marks the beginning of better relations "in a much more harmonious and cooperative spirit" with the school's neighborhood.

Merrill S. Hall III, headmaster of Baltimore's Calvert School, shows a visitor the bound "folder papers" of a first-grader named Edward Richardson. They include a number of short essays with titles such as "The Rainbow Is Pretty."The compositions are without spelling or grammatical errors, and they are in elegant penmanship. They are dated November 1918."You'll see compositions like this throughout the school today," said Mr. Hall, 50. "And you'll see them at Barclay and Woodson," the Baltimore public schools that have adopted the Calvert curriculum.

Representatives of a venerable North Baltimore private school and a posh garden apartment complex agreed yesterday to end a conflict that escalated from polite picketing to politicking before the City Council and the State House. Residents of 4300 N. Charles St. would receive $6,000 to $8,000 in compensation for moving out by Aug. 31. Calvert School would proceed with plans to demolish the apartments, which it acquired eight months ago, and build a middle school and two playing fields.

A dispute simmering since September over the Calvert School's planned expansion appears headed for a resolution with the school preparing to proceed with demolition plans for a North Baltimore apartment complex, both sides said yesterday. Residents of 4300 N. Charles St., a group of garden apartments that the school acquired, would be compensated under a deal in the works between the school and the remaining residents. "We have been negotiating with Calvert," John Murphy, an attorney representing residents who would be displaced, said yesterday.

Second District City Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young said yesterday he will introduce legislation next week that could stop the proposed sale of a North Baltimore apartment complex with mostly elderly residents. Calvert School's pending purchase of apartments at 4300 North Charles has sparked an outcry from many of the more than 100 residents. The school plans to demolish the complex and build a middle school and playing fields for students on the site. Young announced his intention at a meeting yesterday in the office of City Council President Sheila Dixon.