Education Program

U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE Marvin J. Garbis' recent threat to hold in contempt top Baltimore City school officials for failure to properly maintain a computer tracking system is the latest salvo in a war over special education that's been fought in court since 1984. Unfortunately, the computer glitches are peripheral to the central issue and ugly truth about the long-running lawsuit: Despite federal court supervision since the mid-1980s, the city's special education program is still failing to significantly improve the academic performance of students with disabilities.

Hundreds of parents and students visited the Applications and Research Laboratory last week for a better glimpse of the school system's academy-style career and technology education program. Visitors had the opportunity to view displays and talk with business and industry representatives on workplace skills and expectations. Six hundred students are enrolled in the academies, said Richard Weisenhoff, coordinator of Howard's career and technology education program. "Our projections are up for next year," Weisenhoff said.

Each week, The Baltimore Sun publishes a Q&A with an area college lacrosse player to help you become more acquainted with the player and his/her team. Today's guest is Loyola defender Ashley Moulton, a fourth-year starter from Rochester, N.Y. A key component in a defense holding opponents to 9.45 goals per game, Moulton is preparing for the No. 20 Greyhounds' critical four-game road swing in Big East play beginning at undefeated and No. 5 Notre Dame on Friday night. An elementary education major, Moulton will return to Baltimore in the fall to complete her student teaching before following in the footsteps of her mother, Diane Moulton, working with autistic children.

Student government representatives are lobbying the school board to add a sex education "refresher program" for 11th- and 12th-graders.The Howard County Association of Student Councils' proposal would expand sex education, which now ends in ninth grade, into a program for 11th- and 12th-graders that would include contraceptive kits.The contraceptive kits used in school systems vary slightly but usually contain a variety of birth-control devices that teachers use for illustration purposes .The students rejected a separate sex education course after several pointed out that their schedules are already crowded and the six-period day leaves them with too few electives.

Jamie L. Jean hated to put her 6-year-old son, Matthew, on the school bus every morning for the hourlong ride to Shipley's Choice Elementary School in Millersville. Her son, now 8, has Down syndrome. He was enrolled in the school's special education program for disabled children when she, her husband and three sons moved to Annapolis in 1997. Anne Arundel County school officials said Shipley's Choice was the closest school with such a program. "It wasn't fair. I couldn't let go of it," Jean said, recalling the commute her son endured -- and how she called Windsor Farm Elementary in Annapolis every day for six months until officials there agreed to set up a program for him and other disabled children.

In an increasingly wired (and wireless) world, an online presence is becoming indispensable for institutions ranging from businesses to nonprofits to government agencies. Grasping this new reality, Baltimore County education officials last year wisely launched a pilot online education program that served 106 students - almost all of them previously home-schooled. This initiative deserves to be made permanent. The county executive's office disagrees and denied a $2 million request for online education in the 2008-2009 school budget, blaming poor economic conditions.

Carroll County school officials told the Hampstead town council last night that they plan to use part of the old Hampstead Elementary School for a special education program for students with learning disabilities or serious emotional disturbances.Vernon Smith, director of school support services, said five classrooms have been prepared in the newest part of the building to house the program. The program has been renting space at Springfield Hospital Center, but has lost its lease.Dr. Harry Fogle, supervisor of special education, said 25 to 30 middle- and high-school students would participate in the Behavioral Education Support Team, or BEST, program beginning in the fall.

With school districts in Maryland and across the nation facing sharp-edged mandates to bring academic performance of all students up to state and federal standards, educators are wrestling with how to meet that daunting goal. Hundreds of teachers, administrators and researchers huddled last week at the University of Maryland and pledged to work together to eliminate growing achievement gaps between those standards and the many groups of students who are not meeting them -- particularly poor and minority children.

WASHINGTON -- Amid the crackle of partisan bickering, Senate Democrats sought to upstage President Bush's education program yesterday by slamming their own proposal through the Labor and Education Committee on a party-line vote.The Democrats brought up their version of a $472 million education enrichment bill in what Republicans charged was an attempt to pre-empt the expected unveiling today of Mr. Bush's education package."They [Democrats] know that President Bush is making great headway on the education issue, and they are scurrying to be players in the game," charged Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah.

Mary S. "Molly" Jameson, who established and directed two outreach programs at St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church in Baltimore, died Sunday of breast cancer at her Lutherville home. She was 81. The daughter of a building contractor and an educator, Mary Smart was born in Garrett County and raised in Oakland, Friendsville and Grantsville. After graduating from Oakland High School in 1948, she enrolled at what is now Towson University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1952.