Dandridge

The Baltimore Teachers Union's two presidents and other salaried employees have borrowed thousands of dollars in interest-free loans from the union's treasury since 1992.During the past four years, according to union financial records obtained by The Sun, these elected officers and employees have received more than $245,000 as salary advances to be repaid without interest.The borrowers have included Irene B. Dandridge, the teachers' elected president for the past 17 years, and Lorretta Johnson, the teacher aides' elected president for the past 25 years.

Ann Dandridge, Baltimore County's communications coordinator, resigned yesterday to take the part-time position of executive director of the Baltimore County Citizens Foundation.Ms. Dandridge also will be a marketing coordinator for the county Department of Economic Development.As communications coordinator, she was a spokeswoman for County Executive Roger B. Hayden.Her resignation is effective Monday."I enjoyed my work in the Office of Communications, but the change is a good career move for me," she said.

The president of the powerful Baltimore Teachers Union said yesterday that there has been no improvement in Baltimore classrooms since Richard C. Hunter arrived as superintendent 2 1/2 years ago and that the union's board would soon vote on whether he should be rehired."

The Baltimore Teachers Union ratified a new one-year contract yesterday that provides pay raises ranging from $300 to $2,000 -- the first increases in three years."

In a class action suit filed yesterday, a candidate for president of the Baltimore Teachers Union demanded that the union's leaders pay interest on thousands of dollars worth of salary advances they received from two labor groups in recent years.Union Presidents Irene B. Dandridge and Lorretta Johnson engaged in "financial practices that have severely damaged the unions," alleges the suit filed by Adolph McDonald on behalf of members of the teachers union and the Federation of Maryland Teachers.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's provocative plan to appoint the city teachers' union president to a city school board seat is facing some legal hurdles and questions from city and state officials who wonder whether the idea will work.Chief among the obstacles is a city residency requirement that would seem to preclude Irene B. Dandridge a Howard County resident from serving on the board. Another possible snag is a state statute that prohibits anyone from serving on a board that has authority over the person's job.Although she is the Baltimore Teachers Union president, Ms. Dandridge is a teacher by trade, creating potential for a conflict of interest.

On May 6, 2007, WILLIAM A. TUERKE, III, 75, former president of Tuerkes-Beckers, Inc., at the Odyssey Hospice in Las Vegas, NV. Family members were with him at his passing. He is survived by four sons, William A. Tuerke, IV of Baltimore, MD, John Tuerke of W. Friendship, MD, Timothy Tuerke of Las Vegas, NV and Thomas Tuerke of Baltimore, MD and four daughters, Susan Dell of Hedgesville, WV, Cheryl Kouba of Mamer in Luxembourg, Elizabeth Tuerke-Bohle of Dayton, OH and Deborah Tuerke Force of Baltimore, MD. He is also survived by a step-mother Audrey O'Meara of N. Palm Beach, FL, two step-sons, Clay Coatney of Reston, VA and Raymond Steele of Strasberg, VA and two step-daughters, Kim Walker of Dandridge, TN and Georgana Baker of Charlestown, WV as well as 17 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren.

High school teacher Barbara Dandridge left education more than five years ago to find ways to improve it.The Howard County foreign language teacher and administrator got tired of seeing schools that were failing to educate their students.She saw some schools that were teaching students well and others that weren't. She ran into wonderful teachers as well as really bad ones."Students should be able to go from one school to another and get the same quality education," said Dr. Dandridge, who taught Oakland Mills High School and became an assistant principal at Atholton and Mount Hebron.

THERE ARE many promising ways to "change the culture" in Baltimore City's troubled public school system. Appointing the head of the teachers' union to the school board is not among them.In announcing his plan to appoint Irene B. Dandridge to the board, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke referred to precedents in which corporations had appointed union representatives to their boards. But this is a very different proposition. Corporate boards do not set day-to-day policy or negotiate contracts. The school board is intimately involved in all these activities.

THE SUN'S recent articles about the Baltimore Teachers Union were well balanced and informative.However, your May 20 editorial, "City teachers teach a lesson," ,, was myopic and self-serving.To assume that the new BTU president, Marcia Brown, must first address the problems of an inept, ineffective school system is naive and simplistic. She has more immediate problems that deserve her attention.First of all, she finds herself president of a union tainted by nepotism, cronyism and outright corruption.