Community Service

Parents of children in the Chesapeake High School feeder system are invited to attend a meeting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the high school. Dennis Younger, director of curriculum for the county schools, will explain the service learning requirement.State school officials have added service learning -- voluntary community service -- as a requirement for graduation.County schools are beginning service learning programs in sixth grade so a student will have completed the requirement by the time he finishes 10th grade.

There are some things you can't learn in a classroom, and community service is one of them. To understand what it means to read to a nursing home patient or clean up a stream, you can't just sit in a civics class. You have to do it.That is the spirit behind a new state requirement that students complete roughly 75 hours of community service before graduation. Unfortunately, a local school committee's plan to let students fulfill this requirement as part of their regular classes does not adhere to that spirit.

The Howard County Sheriff's Office received a $164,000 state grant for a program that enables some criminals to perform community service to avoid going to jail, county officials have announced.The sheriff's office has overseen more than 500 defendants since it took over the community-service program from the state's Office of Parole and Probation last year.Officials said 4,452 hours of community service have been provided to government agencies and 5,165 hours to nonprofit organizations in the program's first six months.

Earllen Rowe was enraged when her daughter's killer was ordered to perform community service in lieu of prison time. Now, with the news that budget cuts will claim the community service program in Baltimore, she's even angrier."

Thomas K. Ferguson, executive vice president of BB&T and former president of Carroll County Bank and Trust, has been honored by Westminster Rotary Club as its Outstanding Citizen of the Year for 2003. The annual award is given to people who have contributed to their community through their professions and service. Ferguson was chosen for his service as a founding member and chairman of the Greater Westminster Development Corp., a director of the Westminster Town Center Corp. and as a Westminster city councilman.

Maryland is poised to become the first state in the nation to require community service as a condition for graduating from high school, with a vote today by the state Board of Education.If finally approved, the plan and other changes to state graduation requirements would take effect in the 1993-94 school year.The 10-member board voted unanimously to require students to complete either 75 hours of community service or a community-service program designed by their local school system and approved by the state school superintendent.

Tomorrow, a new dimension of community service will debut in our area when the Mount Airy Lions Club holds its first distribution day for SHARE, the Self Help and Resource Exchange program.Groceries will be distributed to more than 25 SHARE program participants from 10 a.m. to noon at the Mount Airy Senior Center, 703 Ridge Ave., said Lion Martha Paisie. Volunteers from the Mount Airy Jaycees are giving the local Lions a hand by picking up the food at a SHARE depot in Linthicum.Participants paid $13 for each SHARE "food unit" in October and will submit receipts tomorrow certifying that two hours of community service were performed in the past month for each food unit purchased.

For an hour every week, sixth-graders at Burleigh Manor Middle School set aside reading, writing and arithmetic and take up homemade knitting needles and skeins of yarn.The 11- and 12-year-olds at the Ellicott City School have been creating squares for afghans since November. The lap-sized warmers will be given to Howard County's retirement home residents to fulfill the community service requirement for graduation from a Maryland middle school.The knitting itself takes place during their "discovery period."

State educators announced plans yesterday for a yearlong review of what students are doing to fulfill the community service required for high school graduation. The study - which will include the appointment of a task force in September - was prompted by growing concerns about the quality and consistency of the community service programs. "This is going to be a meaningful review," said Luke Frazier, director of the Maryland Student Service Alliance, the branch of the Maryland State Department of Education that oversees the program.

A New Jersey man who spent 20 hours in jail for trying to resell four baseball tickets has agreed to serve 40 hours of community service in exchange for having the charges dropped. Brian J. Adams was arrested June 10 after police said he tried to sell four tickets at a discount outside Oriole Park at Camden Yards. He will perform the service hours in New Jersey; the agreement spares him the necessity of returning to Baltimore for a court hearing. Adams' arrest prompted police Commissioner Edward T. Norris to change the department's arrest policy when it comes to enforcing the 6-year-old "Scalp-Free Zone" around Oriole Park.