Carroll Schools

Carroll County interim schools Superintendent Charles I. Ecker has agreed to add a year to his temporary contract, allowing the county more time to search for a permanent schools chief while providing continuity as the school system recovers from a trying two years of legal problems and investigations into bungled construction projects. Yesterday's announcement - made at the end of the school board's annual breakfast with the county delegation to the General Assembly - brought instant commendation for the 71-year-old Carroll native and two-term Howard County executive.

A local newspaper recently published the salaries of administrators in the Carroll County schools.More than 100 of these professionals earn more than $50,000 a year.This is not the first time the salaries of local educators have been published -- indeed, this is the third time in recent memory. Butthe amounts have raised consternation among the uninformed.How, they demand, can anybody be worth these enormous amounts?The answer is self-evident: results.Carroll educators get more done with less.

About 6 inches of snow covered roads and surprised morning commuters yesterday as a storm forecast originally as mixed snow and rain caused a rash of fender benders and closed Carroll schools. Phil Poole, a National Weather Service forecaster in Sterling, Va., said forecasters had expected rain, but yesterday morning, the temperature dropped and the air didn't stay as warm as expected. "Consequently, we got more snow in your part of the world," Poole said. Snow, heavy at times, fell until 2:30 p.m. in Westminster.

A NEW HIGH school opens in Carroll County today, the first in two decades, but there won't be any upperclassmen. No senior prom or graduation to plan. Just freshmen and sophomores to set new traditions - and break a tradition of overcrowded South Carroll schools. The upper grades will arrive in later years. Century High in Eldersburg is a success story for the growing system that labored under years of criticism and lawsuits, and a grand jury investigation, about its school construction program.

Several Carroll County school officials, including Superintendent Charles I. Ecker and facilities director Ray Prokop, are expected to appeal to state officials today for an additional $5 million to help them pay for construction projects related to crowded schools, aging buildings and all-day kindergarten. The appeals will be made during a Board of Public Works meeting in Annapolis at which Ecker and school officials from around the state are expected to ask for more funds for projects.

Carroll County schools have maintained their status among the top-performing in the Maryland School Performance Program, in results released statewide yesterday as a school "report card."Superintendent R. Edward Shilling and his staff emphasized that Carroll schools have continued that trend while spending less per student than the state average and even less than Baltimore.He said he has told principals, as they share school results with the community, to "celebrate the success. I want the teachers to know we absolutely believe the reason for our success can be put right at their feet."

The Carroll County school board, following the lead of other Maryland districts fostering student safety, will hire its first security coordinator -- a 28-year veteran of the Maryland State Police -- next week.Capt. Lawrence E. Faries, 51, a 26-year county resident, will be named to the newly created post of coordinator of school security at a board meeting Oct. 14, The Sun has learned from sources familiar with the hiring."This position is a preventive decision," said Edwin Davis, Carroll's director of pupil services/special programs, declining to comment specifically on who will be hired.

Less than 18 months after contract agreements ended the most contentious round of bargaining in years between the Carroll school board and five unions representing 3,200 employees, negotiators are gearing up for a fresh round of talks. Mindful of bitter bargaining that stretched past the contracts' expiration date last year, union and school board negotiators have tried to leave plenty of time to reach agreements by next year's June 30 deadline. The local teachers union, the largest of the five labor groups, is scheduled to begin bargaining in two weeks, and negotiations with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees started last month.

Several states and cities as well as two Baltimore-area school systems have inquired about gun safety classes conducted in Carroll County schools, which teach children from kindergarten through 12th grade what to do if they see a gun. Howard and Baltimore counties and the State Department of Education have requested information about the classes' content and reception. Other inquiries, said William J. Piercy, Carroll's assistant supervisor of staff development and health, have come from California, Michigan, Montana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Texas.

A Carroll County judge has turned down a request to throw out a second-degree rape charge against former Carroll schools Superintendent William H. Hyde, according to a court order filed yesterday. Hyde, 61, who is charged with sexually abusing an elementary school-aged girl, had been scheduled to go to trial this month. But the court date was pushed back to August by the judge's order, which addressed a range of issues raised in pretrial hearings. Defense attorneys complained in March that the rape charge was filed seven months after Hyde's August arrest on charges of molesting the young girl.