County School Board

Landmark preservation status is the latest tool being used by the Catonsville Community Conservation Association in its fight to restore the former Catonsville Middle School on Bloomsbury Avenue.The Baltimore County Landmarks Preservation Commission recently voted unanimously to add the 70-year-old building to its landmarks list. The vote serves as a recommendation for preservation status to the County Council, which makes the final decision.Jim Himel, CCCA vice president, said the group hopes to safeguard the Bloomsbury building while efforts continue to convert it back to a middle school.

Joe A. Hairston, Baltimore County's next schools superintendent, is a man in much demand. Although Hairston has agreed to take charge of Baltimore County schools starting July 1, a job for which he will be paid $180,000 a year, education officials in Georgia, where he used to work, question whether he will be able to satisfy a contract he signed with them in January. The contract confusion in Georgia could create problems for Hairston in Maryland. Members of the Baltimore County Board of Education, Hairston's new bosses, want him all to themselves.

A key state committee has recommended in a preliminary round of decisions that Baltimore County receive at least $17.8 million in state school construction money, about $7 million more than state officials had recommended last week.The increase, approved last week by the state Interagency Committee on School Construction, comes as county officials grapple with aging schools and increased competition from other school systems for state construction funds.A consultant for Baltimore County schools told the county school board three months ago that repairing the county's elementary schools will cost $213 million over the next three years.

For second time, in 4 months, jail errs, frees inmate Anne Arundel County officials said yesterday that a man who had been sentenced to serve six months for failing to pay child support was mistakenly released this week. It was the second accidental release in less than four months. Alvin Leroy Bibb, 41, of the 1600 block of Church Street in Curtis Bay was to spend his time at the Ordnance Road Detention Center in a work-release program. After he was released Monday, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The summer of '93 promises to be unusually short for Baltimore County students and teachers. Blame it on late Labor Day.This school year, classes started after Labor Day and will close June 18, at the earliest. Next school year, according to a calendar the county school board approved last week, classes will begin Aug. 30, a week before Labor Day. That means summer vacation will last just 10 weeks, compared with about 12 weeks for previous summers. It will be even shorter for teachers, who are scheduled to report Aug. 24."

The county school board will vote Wednesday whether to construct a new building or renovate the old area high school building for a proposed 725-student Brooklyn Park Middle School.The board will choose from five options, ranging from renovation of the former Brooklyn Park High School for $16.3 million to a complete overhaul of the building for $22.4 million. Building a new school would cost $20.6 million.The middle school is expected to open in fall 2000.The board also will decide among options for expanding Southern Middle School, at 5235 Solomon Island Road in Lothian.

Howard County's newest elementary school probably will be named Ilchester Elementary School.A committee of parents and school officials recommended the name to the Howard County school board last Thursday, saying it had widespread support in the community.The school, being built on Ilchester Road near the Trinity School in Ellicott City, is scheduled to open next fall to relieve crowding at other elementary schools in the northeastern portion of the county."The name acknowledges the community and the history," said Alice W. Haskins, the county's middle school instructional director and chairwoman of the name committee.

The Howard County school board included yesterday in its budget request for the next fiscal year money to pay for having an athletic trainer at each high school during intra-scholastic sports practices and events.The allocation, which the County Council must approve if it is to become effective July 1, marked the first time since the idea was broached locally in 1988 that the board has even agreed to seek the money.Athletes in Howard County public schools, among the state's most affluent, and their counterparts in Baltimore are the last in Central Maryland not to have trainerspresent during athletic activity.

THE BALTIMORE County School Board adopted an $891 million spending plan at its regular public meeting last week with not even a breath of discussion. Picture that. And this: It's a place-holder budget -- school officials don't know whether their operating plan is achievable or their bottom line real, and won't know until the state figures out how much aid it will give counties, and yet ... no comment. Should county residents take this to mean that the board is all talked out, having debated the issues in previous forums, public and private?

About 50 teachers crowded into the Baltimore County school board meeting at the Greenwood headquarters last night to reaffirm their unhappiness over budget cuts, lack of pay raises, furlough days and crowded classrooms."