Crofton Elementary

When Evelyn Svoboda began her teaching career, times were different. The pay was meager -- a few thousand dollars. Women were expected to quit work when they became pregnant. And classes were tiny -- she once taught five children in a one-room Montana schoolhouse that lacked indoor plumbing.Over the years, she has watched changes in her profession: increasing pay and improvements in the treatment of women. She has also seen a difference in her pupils: more distractions, more discipline problems and less time spent on homework.

THIRTY-EIGHT area teen-agers were extra sleepy Sunday. They had just returned from a weeklong trip to Leslie County, Ky., where they took part in Crofton Community United Methodist Church's annual Appalachian Service Project (ASP).After an 11-hour drive, they spent the week camping in a local elementary school, meeting with young people from Methodist churches in Pennsylvania and Alabama and working on a variety of projects.Cindy Dezio, a sophomore at the University of Maryland, reports that she worked hard.

County school board members will take public comments and then cast the final vote tonight on a proposal to allow students at crowded North County and Arundel high schools to transfer to other schools.With the construction of a high school in West County a long way off, Superintendent Carol S. Parham proposed allowing students transfer to under-enrolled schools.Two weeks ago, the board voted to add a clause to that proposal that would allow the transfers, but only to schools that are less than 90 percent full.

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.

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.

Crofton activists, weary of crowded schools and years of promises, are turning up the heat on school and county officials.Determined to ensure that proposed additions to Crofton Middle and Crofton Elementary schools get built and that more portable classrooms are provided as a temporary fix, they are rounding up as many people as they can for a Nov. 21 show of strength.More than 200 people, from community as well as school groups, are expected at the meeting with school board and local officials at 7 p.m. at Crofton Country Club.

A few Anne Arundel County parents sent their children to school yesterday with their first assignment -- immunizations -- incomplete. School officials promptly sent them home.Jane Doyle, a school spokeswoman, said officials did not have a complete count of the number of students sent home yesterday, but they knew Friday that 2,000 students had not been properly immunized or did not have the documentation.That is an improvement over last year, when 5,600 students showed up on the first day without immunization records, Doyle said.

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."

A gunman robbed a Crofton pizza parlor Tuesday of an undisclosed amount of money, county police said.The man ordered a submarine sandwich at Pizza Boli's in the 2100 block of Defense Highway shortly before 8 p.m., police said.Police offered this account: The man walked in and out of the store twice, returned, pulled up his shirt to show a black handgun stuck in his pants and announced a robbery. He ordered all but manager Abdul Chaudry, 37, into a back room and forced them to lie on the floor.

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.

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.

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.

Service academy aspirants can get nomination form Those who wish to attend one of the four U.S. service academies next year may request a nomination application from Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes' office. The deadline for submitting completed applications is Nov. 5. Students interested in attending the Naval Academy, Military Academy, Air Force Academy or the Merchant Marine Academy may obtain a nomination application packet, which contains information and forms to apply for consideration of a nomination.

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'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.

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.

THIRTY-EIGHT area teen-agers were extra sleepy Sunday. They had just returned from a weeklong trip to Leslie County, Ky., where they took part in Crofton Community United Methodist Church's annual Appalachian Service Project (ASP).After an 11-hour drive, they spent the week camping in a local elementary school, meeting with young people from Methodist churches in Pennsylvania and Alabama and working on a variety of projects.Cindy Dezio, a sophomore at the University of Maryland, reports that she worked hard.

When Evelyn Svoboda began her teaching career, times were different. The pay was meager -- a few thousand dollars. Women were expected to quit work when they became pregnant. And classes were tiny -- she once taught five children in a one-room Montana schoolhouse that lacked indoor plumbing.Over the years, she has watched changes in her profession: increasing pay and improvements in the treatment of women. She has also seen a difference in her pupils: more distractions, more discipline problems and less time spent on homework.