Calverton

A Maryland child-advocacy group is recommending state officials take a more aggressive approach to fixing the state's most troubled schools, including intervening when the efforts of local school boards fail.A report released today by Advocates for Children and Youth says that at many of the schools identified two or three years ago as failing, test scores have not risen significantly, particularly in Baltimore.Since 1994, the state has put 89 schools in Maryland, including 79 in Baltimore, on a list of failing schools based on their performance on statewide tests that measure reading and math skills.

Responding to rising crime in the Washington suburbs, the FBI will formally open a field office in Calverton today, adding more agents and squads to investigate everything from bank robberies to organized crime."

The principal of one of Baltimore's troubled middle schools sat next to his boss yesterday and told the state Board of Education that his school "is not in physical condition to open" next week.Joseph Heaney, who was appointed principal of Calverton Middle School on July 12, ruefully described physical problems at the West Baltimore school, including arson damage from last spring that has yet to be repaired.While he reported to the board, which has ordered the school to improve or face takeover, Patricia E. Newby, deputy superintendent, sat next to Mr. Heaney, nodding occasionally.

Starwood Lodging Trust and Starwood Lodging Corp. announced yesterday the purchase of the Holiday Inn Calverton for $11.5 million in cash.The Los Angeles-based real estate investment and related management firm bought the 206-room hotel, which opened in 1987, for roughly 75 percent of what it would cost to build the property today.Starwood plans to close on the purchase of the Beltsville hotel, 12 miles north of downtown Washington and 37 miles south of Baltimore, later this week.The Holiday Inn Calverton marks Starwood's second deal this month in the Washington area.

Bell Atlantic Corp., which announced in January that it would move 600 engineering jobs to its Pratt Street state headquarters building, said yesterday that it will move 120 customer service representatives from downtown to an office in Calverton, about 30 miles down Interstate 95.Bell Atlantic spokeswoman Shannon Fioravanti said the move, expected to take place in late 1996, is part of a consolidation of its consumer line of business into fewer locations."

Despite the exposed insulation, despite the vodka bottles and glass strewn outside on the steps and in the grass, despite the broken hallway gates -- Calverton Middle School opened yesterday.What the school lacked in physical readiness, its staff tried to make up for with a pioneering spirit and warmth for the 1,270 students expected to arrive, new Principal Joseph Heaney said.Many who arrived immediately became lost. They didn't remember the instructions mailed home: Each grade level would enter the building from a different door and spend its day in separate wings of the sprawling building.

AMONG THE GUESTS at a recent celebration of our 60th wedding anniversary was a young couple planning to be married soon. Each was a college graduate from an upper middle-class family."

A school cleaning woman was fatally stabbed in the chest and throat yesterday afternoon after she apparently interrupted a burglary at Calverton Middle School, Baltimore police said.The intruder repeatedly stabbed Earlene McFadden, 58, who had been on the schools' custodial staff for 18 years, after she walked into one of the classrooms about 5 p.m. and found the man hiding there, said homicide detective Errol Etting."It was an unprovoked attack; there was no reason he had to attack her," Detective Etting said.

Irony, irony -- when V. F. Calverton is finally the subject of a biographical study, the author is from New Zealand. But the face on the front cover is that of George Goetz (1900-1940), a once-famous Baltimore intellectual, and the brick rowhouse on the back cover is his old home, 2110 E. Pratt St.By now, explaining is in order: in 1923, when Goetz, the son of middle-class, East Baltimore Germans, set out to call his new magazine the Radical Quarterly, title alone was likely to cost him and his wife, Helen Letzer, their jobs as public school teachers.

Although her work was cleaning up after people all day, Earlene McFadden always told her family that she loved her job as a custodian at Calverton Middle School because she liked being around children.And it was there, in one of the classrooms, that she was fatally wounded by a man with a knife.Mrs. McFadden, 57, died Friday after being attacked about 5 p.m. in a classroom in the West Baltimore school where police believe she surprised a burglar who may have been hoping to steal money raised by children in a candy sale.

A 13-year-old boy admitted yesterday attempting a fourth-degree sex offense against a Calverton Elementary/Middle staff member who was putting in extra hours at the West Baltimore school on a Sunday afternoon. Master Zakia Mahasa put the boy, a former Calverton student whose name The Sun is withholding because he is a juvenile, on indefinite probation and ordered him to undergo a psycho-sexual evaluation and to follow the evaluator's recommendations. Mahasa also postponed a second case involving the May 4 break-in at the school, which immediately preceded the attack.

It's a tale of two different realities of Baltimore's school system. On Tuesday, Kristin Covaleskie, a fourth-grade teacher at Northwood Elementary School, was celebrated - with applause from her students and gifts from her supervisors - as the city's Teacher of the Year. A day earlier, two 13-year-old students at Calverton Elementary/Middle were arrested when they showed up for class after allegedly breaking into the school and attacking a staff member who was there on her own time over the weekend.

A staff member at Calverton Elementary/Middle was putting in extra hours at the West Baltimore school Sunday afternoon when two 13-year-old boys broke into the building and one tried to rape her, police confirmed yesterday. Realizing that her attacker was unarmed, police said, the woman fought back, and both the boys - identified as students at the school - fled. When they returned for class Monday, they were arrested and charged as juveniles with attempted first-degree rape, attempted robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and trespassing, police said.

Parents of children at Lafayette Elementary and Calverton Middle schools in West Baltimore are pleading with city school system officials not to send a high school to operate in their building, saying the move would trigger a gang conflict and expose young children to unnecessary violence. The Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts is scheduled to move to the Lafayette/Calverton building when the Southwestern High School complex, where it is currently located, closes this summer.

Last summer, Baltimore school officials made a deal with 75 overage pupils who had failed eighth grade at Calverton Middle School: Show up for an extra-long school day, pass your classes and a battery of tests, and in November you can move on to high school. But November came and the pupils were told to wait until December. In December, they were told to wait until January. Last week, the teens and their parents say, word came from the system's area academic office for middle schools that the pupils are staying put even though 65 of them have met their end of the deal.

On Friday January 16, 2004 VANITY A. , beloved wife of the late Clarence R. Maxey; loving mother of AntoinetteDickson of Bowie, MD, Cestaine Glover of Columbia, MD; devoted sister of Gary and George Goode and Clara Parker; cherished grandmother of Maya, Matthew and Zaria Glover. Relatives and friends may call at the First Baptist Church of Guilford on Thursday January 22, 2004 from 11 a.m. to 12 noon at which time services will be held. Interment on Friday January 23, 2004 at Calverton National Cemetery, Calverton, NY at 1 p.m. Arrangements by Witzke Funeral Homes, Inc. of Coumbia.

The man looked Middle Eastern, the callers said, and he was skulking around the American Legion Bridge on the Capital Beltway. Heavy traffic whizzed past, crossing the Potomac on a night when tensions were already high because of a big event on the Washington Mall. Maryland State Police arrived to question the man, and his story didn't add up. When three friends came to retrieve him, their stories seemed just as curious. The mystery deepened when one of their names turned up on a watch list for terrorism.

City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr., Mayor Martin O'Malley and city school administrators are working to create a stepped-up effort to return truant children to school. Starting Monday, the city will begin a pilot program at Calverton Middle School on the west side in which a school police officer will drive a van around the neighborhood near the school, picking up truant pupils and returning them to the school, according to city officials. At the school, the children will be evaluated by social workers to determine if they have problems that can be addressed, said Deputy Mayor Jeanne Hitchcock.

A 13-year-old boy was arrested yesterday and charged in the rape of a 12-year-old girl at Calverton Middle School in West Baltimore last month. Police said the boy, whom the victim knew by his first name, pulled her into a faculty bathroom and assaulted her the afternoon of Nov. 15. The girl reported the assault and was taken to a local hospital where she was examined, police said. The boy was charged as a juvenile with second-degree rape, a second-degree sex offense and second-degree assault, police said.

A Maryland child-advocacy group is recommending state officials take a more aggressive approach to fixing the state's most troubled schools, including intervening when the efforts of local school boards fail.A report released today by Advocates for Children and Youth says that at many of the schools identified two or three years ago as failing, test scores have not risen significantly, particularly in Baltimore.Since 1994, the state has put 89 schools in Maryland, including 79 in Baltimore, on a list of failing schools based on their performance on statewide tests that measure reading and math skills.