Crofton Elementary

EVEN IN THE summer, Crofton Elementary School's PTA is busy.On Saturday, the PTA will sponsor a Summer Skate Night at Skate Zone in Crofton from 5 p.m. to 7: 30 p.m. Admission will be $3. Elementary school-age children and their families are invited.For more information, call PTA Vice President Lisa Eliot at 410-451-2917.Eliot also reports that the PTA is planning a fall fund-raiser that everyone should enjoy -- producing a Croftonopoly game. Local vendors and community organizations will sponsor property ads, and the street names will be familiar.

The list is long enough to give contractors a stiff workout. There are roof repairs and resurfacing due for Georgetown East Elementary School and painting for George Fox Middle School. Mills-Parole Elementary will get tiles, carpet and terrazzo. Crofton Elementary is due for kitchen equipment and fire sprinklers. Those are just some of the more than two dozen projects that the Anne Arundel County Board of Education approved this week as consent items — they are funded, and the board has given its blessing for them to be awarded to contractors.

WHEN Wayne Bark began his new job as Crofton Elementary School's principal, he moved a round table into his office for meetings with teachers, parents and administrators about the next school year. Whenever an issue is being discussed, Bark says he tries to imagine a child sitting in the center of the table and how the school can best serve the needs of that child. "This approach has served me well," reflects Bark, 47, as he addressed the Crofton Elementary faculty last month. "One thing I always hold true," he says, "I always try to put children first."

Anne Arundel County school officials moved forward this week with plans to redistrict schools in the Crofton area without provisions for a possible $38 million elementary school in Odenton - which developers had pledged to build if an age-restriction covenant were lifted to allow a new development. On Wednesday, the school board voted to take to a public hearing a plan crafted by a redistricting committee and proposed by Superintendent Kevin Maxwell that would address overcrowding at Nantucket Elementary School in Crofton.

The list is long enough to give contractors a stiff workout. There are roof repairs and resurfacing due for Georgetown East Elementary School and painting for George Fox Middle School. Mills-Parole Elementary will get tiles, carpet and terrazzo. Crofton Elementary is due for kitchen equipment and fire sprinklers. Those are just some of the more than two dozen projects that the Anne Arundel County Board of Education approved this week as consent items — they are funded, and the board has given its blessing for them to be awarded to contractors.

ODYSSEY OF the Mind teams from Crofton Middle, Crofton Elementary and Crofton Woods Elementary schools competed last weekend in the statewide Odyssey at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.Crofton Middle's Marvelous Mentor team of Jimmy Drury, Katie Elliott, Erin Frey, Christina Miller, Cara McClesky, Sean Nicholson and Dana Rashidi took second place in its category.Nathan Dissmeyer, Lydia Hu, Lauren McClee, Johnathan Rashidi, Matt Schulz and Calli Vance, also of Crofton Middle, formed the third-place Morph Magic team.

Anne Arundel County's largest elementary school houses 116 pupils more than it was built to hold and exceeds what the county projected for this school year by a full classroom. The Greater Crofton Council - which spearheaded a campaign for a new Crofton library - now wants a new school to relieve the crowding at Crofton Elementary."[The school is] crying for help," said Torrey Jacobsen, vice president of the council, whose daughter will start at Crofton Elementary in the fall. The county's long-term budget contains nothing for a new elementary school in Crofton.

A coalition of Crofton-area groups is launching a petition drive to gain classroom space at two schools and ensure that additions to those schools are built."

Anne Arundel County's largest elementary school houses 116 pupils more than it was built to hold and exceeds what the county projected for this school year by a full classroom. The Greater Crofton Council - which spearheaded a campaign for a new Crofton library - now wants a new school to relieve the crowding at Crofton Elementary. "[The school is] crying for help," said Torrey Jacobsen, vice president of the council, whose daughter will start at Crofton Elementary in the fall. The county's long-term budget contains nothing for a new elementary school in Crofton.

For the fourth time in two years, a member of a Crofton civic group has been accused of taking money from the treasury.Crofton Elementary PTA officials said yesterday they will pursue criminal charges against Peter J. Boudreau, the former treasurer, who they say took nearly $19,000 during his one-year term.In a two-page letter mailed out to parents and teachers yesterday, PTA officials accused Mr. Boudreau of taking money between November 1993 and December 1994, when the Crofton resident disappeared.

Youngsters opened a classroom door at Crofton Elementary School and entered what appeared to be a crime scene: a masking-tape outline of a body, a hammer, a tennis ball covered with dog hair and a "Caution: Do Not Cross" sign. They were walking in on a mock incident as part of their weeklong Crime Scene and Chemistry Camp, which introduces rising first- through fifth-graders to the ways that real-life detectives use science to solve crimes. The camp, held this week, draws students who have interest in mysteries yet are mostly unfamiliar with detective skills.

An Anne Arundel County elementary school principal has asked for a transfer to another school after district officials began investigating concerns that she did not respond to complaints about a student before he ended up threatening a teacher. In a letter to the school community this week, Crofton Elementary School principal Shauna Kauffman said Superintendent Kevin Maxwell had approved her request for a transfer to another school. She will be moved at the end of the school year.

Principal Derek Burns traveled to Baltimore on Tuesday to accept Crofton Meadows Elementary's Maryland Blue Ribbon School of Excellence award and then made it back in time to direct traffic out of the school's parking lot. The first-year principal scarcely paused long enough to gauge responses from students, parents and staff, whose efforts made it Anne Arundel County's 15th state Blue Ribbon school. Burns isn't one to stand idle. He readily credits former Crofton Meadows Principal Janine Robinson for guiding the school during the past few years, leadership he said has led Crofton Meadows to posting 100 percent marks in five categories in the Maryland School Assessments and a 98 percent mark in a sixth MSA category.

Crofton Elementary's lunch is a series of six tightly choreographed shifts that takes up nearly three hours, twice as long as at most elementary schools. Classroom space in the school is so limited that a special education class meets in what used to be a guidance counselor's office. Over capacity by 200 students, the school houses the overflow in 11 portables that hem the school building in from the sides and back. "It can be very frustrating," Principal Donna O'Shea said. A new redistricting plan approved by the school board last week seeks to solve Crofton's woes by moving 210 of the elementary school's students from the Walden community to the new Gambrills-area elementary school, which will open on Nantucket Drive this fall with a capacity of 713 students.

Most school board members will say that, aside from cutting the budget, redrawing school boundaries that can divide communities and uproot students is among the hardest choices decisions they make. Anne Arundel County school board members go through the redistricting drill nearly every year. But this year, explosive growth in West County is forcing the board to wrestle with one of its toughest dilemmas yet involving boundaries and busing. The board is in the middle of a battle between two communities, on the east and west sides of Route 3, over dueling redistricting proposals by Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell and a group of Piney Orchard parents that would free space at Crofton Elementary and fill a new Gambrills elementary school.

Anne Arundel County school board members will consider redistricting proposals today, chief among them one from Superintendent Kevin Maxwell that would redraw boundaries to free space at Crofton Elementary and fill a new Gambrills elementary school. The board won't deliver its final decision on new boundaries in West County until April. But it will decide today which of the proposals - some submitted by citizen groups - to present at public hearings for community comment before the final vote.

Come meet the authors of tomorrow at Crofton Elementary School.The school will hold its seventh annual P.A.W. Printers Authors Celebration at 7 p.m. Thursday.Nearly 300 young authors in grades 1 through 5 have been at work writing stories and illustrating them for this event. The books will be on display for parents and friends to read, and the authors will be on hand to discuss their works and give autographs.P.A.W, which stands for Publishing Advances Writing, was started seven years ago by Carol Fox and Nancy Gough, who worked with one grade each year.

The Bowie/Crofton Multiple Sclerosis Support Group will meet at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Adult Day Care Center of Bowie, 3112 Belair Drive. A speaker from the White House staff will discuss the Clinton health plan. The group meets the first Thursday of each month.For information, you may call 721-1537 or 793-3896.*St. Stephen's Church, 1110 St. Stephens Church Road, will hold its annual spring dinner from 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Saturday. The menu will include baked ham, turkey salad, potatoes, string beans, corn pudding, a cranberry mold, rolls, peach shortcake with whipped cream and beverages.

Performance this week to honor Roger `Pip' Moyer The Naptown Players, a performance group of current and former Annapolis High School students, will make its debut during a tribute to former Mayor Roger "Pip" Moyer this week. The group will sing, dance and perform a vignette written by local historian and Annapolis High alumna Janice Hayes-Williams. The vignette is based on a jazz club from 1940s Annapolis called the Washington Hotel. The characters are based on people who lived and worked in the hotel, including Tony Award-winner Pearl Bailey.