Chesapeake Academy

ALL OF THE PARTICIPANTS in Saturday's Greater Severna Park Fourth of July parade were winners, but some received official prizes, too.Community floats: Hollywood on the Severn; West Severna Park, Round Bay.Community walking: Britting- ham and Chartridge.Club float: Green Hornets, Severna Park Rotary Club and Community Center at Woods.Club walking: Severna Park High School Band, Cub Scout Troop 858 and Cub Scout Troop 918.Commercial float: O'Conor Piper & Flynn, O'Shea's Pub and Severna Flowers.

The former bookkeeper of a private school in Arnold has been sentenced to 18 months in jail and ordered to repay the $300,000 she embezzled from Chesapeake Academy over nearly four years. But how much of that money the school will see is questionable.Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Clayton R. Greene Jr. also ordered a weeping Patricia Anne Mason, 40, to perform 500 hours of community service while she serves five years of probation after her prison term."She is never going to be able to make full restitution," said her attorney, T. Joseph Touhey.

CHESAPEAKE ACADEMY teachers are noticing a lot of their students walking around with their heads in the clouds. It could be those aeronautical scientists and engineers showing up at school, filling the youngsters' heads with facts about outer space.All of this is because Chesapeake Academy was selected to be part of a pilot program sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Science teacher Holli Quillin has included several NASA activities in her classroom. One helped her show second- and third-graders how to write their galactic addresses.

GORDON LOETZ has been named chairman of the Chesapeake Academy Board of Trustees for the 1996-1997 school year.Other officers are Jane Pehlke, president; Anne Schellie, first vice chairman; Pennington Hopkins, second vice chairman, and Patricia McManus, treasurer.General board members include Pamela Anderson, Richard Barnard, Eleanor Davidov, John Dunbar, Fred Graul, Richard Martin, Carl Salbold, Virginia Skiest, Patricia Troy, Fred Bednark, Frances Counihan, Julianne Deger, George Goreyab, Sheila Kendall, George Moran, Ethel Rew, Louise Sivy and Jerry Smith.

When Chesapeake Academy built a parking lot over the summer, the school got a bonus.The bulldozers scooped out two small ponds in an adjacent field, creating an educational wetland where marsh grasses, bullfrogs and insects could flourish.The students had their first chance to dig in the mud and begin shaping their wetland habitat last week.They planted elderberry shrubs, silky dogwoods and buttonbushes. Adding the wetland plants is the first step in attracting birds and wildlife to study, said Holli Quillin, curriculum coordinator and science teacher.

It's Sept. 1: Do you know where your "Lion King" lunch box is?First-graders begin a journey this week that is remarkably fresh in the memories of their parents and grandparents.*Soon to celebrate 15 years of service, Hospice of the Chesapeake, Anne Arundel County's largest nonprofit agency for the care of terminally ill patients and their families, announces the arrival of its new medical director, Dr. Russell DeLuca.To direct its expanding nursing staff and related medical employees who care for the ever-increasing patient load, Chesapeake has engaged the 39-year-old specialist in oncology and hematology.

Ethel Rew, a founder of the Chesapeake Academy, and her husband, Erwin, have dramatically increased the school's building fund coffers with a donation of $100,000.At an assembly in May, Rew delighted students with recollections of how the school began 13 years ago with 36 children in the basement of a beauty parlor.Rew, a former third-grade teacher at Chesapeake, congratulated the school for maintaining its original mission of strong academics in a close, family-type environment.*If an injured bird or squirrel brings out the good Samaritan in you, attend the lecture on emergency care for injured and orphaned wildlife at 7:30 p.m. June 10 at Quiet Waters Park.

For weeks, Ronnie Giddings dreamed of a place under the sea, where fish cavorted far below the hulls of ships.The fifth-grader at Chesapeake Academy in Arnold turned his mind pictures into poetry, and now the 11-year-old's poetry has been turned into music.Parts of Ronnie's poem, along with poems written by six other county students, have been incorporated into the lyrics of a symphony about the Chesapeake Bay. The symphony, called Chesapeake Suite, will be performed this spring by the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Chesapeake Academy Headmistress Jane Pehlke stands at the door of the Severna Park school each morning and greets her students.She knows each of the school's students by name -- no small feat, even if enrollment is a relatively small 185.But the academy, which sits atop a hill just off of Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard, always seems bent on giving its students something extra. When the school began in 1979, it was housed in a former beauty shop. Thirteen years later, it is kicking off a $500,000 fund-raising project to build additional space for the school.

The Chesapeake Academy Parent-Teacher Association president Wendy Stepanuk announced that the school's May 4 Spring French Carnival raised more than $6,000 for the school's scholarship program.Sponsoredby Pepsi-Cola and supported by area businesses and Chesapeake Academy parents, the carnival was a day of games, foods and crafts in addition to performances in French by the Chesapeake Academy students.The day ended with a parent/faculty volleyball game. The parents were victorious in two out of three games.

A teacher has settled a discrimination lawsuit against a private school in Anne Arundel County that federal authorities said had fired him because he has the virus that causes AIDS. In the consent decree approved Wednesday by U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. in Baltimore, Chauncey Stevenson is to receive $79,750, but the Chesapeake Academy in Arnold did not admit wrongdoing. Among the actions it must take are steps to teach its supervisors about the Americans with Disabilities Act. The law requires employers to accommodate workers' disabilities.

An Anne Arundel County elementary school teacher was wrongfully terminated from his job because he is HIV-positive, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleges in its suit that Chesapeake Academy, a private school in Arnold, discriminated against the teacher because of his disability by not renewing his contract, a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The complaint was filed Monday in Baltimore. Chauncey Stevenson, a second-grade and after-school music teacher, had been employed since 2003 and received good evaluations from his supervisors, parents and students during his tenure, according to EEOC lawyers.

The more than 40 immigrants who gathered in the ceremonial chambers of the U.S. District Court in Baltimore yesterday afternoon knew what to expect of their 15-minute naturalization ceremony - an event for which they had long been preparing. What they didn't know, however, is that they would share the experience with a group of 46 fourth-grade pupils from Chesapeake Academy in Anne Arundel County - the first such visit to the courthouse by academy students. "It's so special that they are here with us," said Anne Truong, 25, who immigrated from Vietnam four years ago and lives in Silver Spring.

Nancy A. Sabold, admissions and development director at Chesapeake Academy and an active participant in her community, died of cancer Tuesday at her Arnold home. She was 46. Born and raised Nancy Antoinette Sampogna in Washington, she was a graduate of St. Patrick's Academy. She earned a bachelor's degree in accounting in 1978 from George Washington University and attended Georgetown University Law School. Mrs. Sabold was a senior program director for nine years at Singer Link Simulation in Columbia before joining the staff of Chesapeake Academy, an independent elementary school in Arnold, in 1994.

ALL OF THE PARTICIPANTS in Saturday's Greater Severna Park Fourth of July parade were winners, but some received official prizes, too.Community floats: Hollywood on the Severn; West Severna Park, Round Bay.Community walking: Britting- ham and Chartridge.Club float: Green Hornets, Severna Park Rotary Club and Community Center at Woods.Club walking: Severna Park High School Band, Cub Scout Troop 858 and Cub Scout Troop 918.Commercial float: O'Conor Piper & Flynn, O'Shea's Pub and Severna Flowers.

The former bookkeeper of a private school in Arnold has been sentenced to 18 months in jail and ordered to repay the $300,000 she embezzled from Chesapeake Academy over nearly four years. But how much of that money the school will see is questionable.Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Clayton R. Greene Jr. also ordered a weeping Patricia Anne Mason, 40, to perform 500 hours of community service while she serves five years of probation after her prison term."She is never going to be able to make full restitution," said her attorney, T. Joseph Touhey.

CHESAPEAKE ACADEMY teachers are noticing a lot of their students walking around with their heads in the clouds. It could be those aeronautical scientists and engineers showing up at school, filling the youngsters' heads with facts about outer space.All of this is because Chesapeake Academy was selected to be part of a pilot program sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Science teacher Holli Quillin has included several NASA activities in her classroom. One helped her show second- and third-graders how to write their galactic addresses.

When Chesapeake Academy built a parking lot over the summer, the school got a bonus.The bulldozers scooped out two small ponds in an adjacent field, creating an educational wetland where marsh grasses, bullfrogs and insects could flourish.The students had their first chance to dig in the mud and begin shaping their wetland habitat last week.They planted elderberry shrubs, silky dogwoods and buttonbushes. Adding the wetland plants is the first step in attracting birds and wildlife to study, said Holli Quillin, curriculum coordinator and science teacher.

GORDON LOETZ has been named chairman of the Chesapeake Academy Board of Trustees for the 1996-1997 school year.Other officers are Jane Pehlke, president; Anne Schellie, first vice chairman; Pennington Hopkins, second vice chairman, and Patricia McManus, treasurer.General board members include Pamela Anderson, Richard Barnard, Eleanor Davidov, John Dunbar, Fred Graul, Richard Martin, Carl Salbold, Virginia Skiest, Patricia Troy, Fred Bednark, Frances Counihan, Julianne Deger, George Goreyab, Sheila Kendall, George Moran, Ethel Rew, Louise Sivy and Jerry Smith.

It's Sept. 1: Do you know where your "Lion King" lunch box is?First-graders begin a journey this week that is remarkably fresh in the memories of their parents and grandparents.*Soon to celebrate 15 years of service, Hospice of the Chesapeake, Anne Arundel County's largest nonprofit agency for the care of terminally ill patients and their families, announces the arrival of its new medical director, Dr. Russell DeLuca.To direct its expanding nursing staff and related medical employees who care for the ever-increasing patient load, Chesapeake has engaged the 39-year-old specialist in oncology and hematology.