Elementary School

WHEN LUKE A. SHAW was a year old, his brother, left home to care for his little sibling, secured him with a belt in a tiny rocking chair by the fire place. Shaw rocked and rocked, until he pitched forward into the fire's dying embers. He landed on his forehead and hands. His sister and brother retrieved him, and his mother came home in time to find the flesh melting from his fingers.Three years later, Shaw remembers, there was a train ride and the consoling Baby Ruth candy bars his father plied him with as they traveled from their rural North Carolina home to the hospital in Gastonia.

Learn from past for answers to overcrowding We have all heard, "If you don't learn from history, you are destined to repeat it. " We must learn from events 18 years ago when citizens wanted the (County Executive Dutch) Ruppersberger Administration to commit to the voters' approval to reopen Bloomsbury as a middle school. Instead, the county executive transferred the approved monies to other school projects. Citizens of Catonsville united and appeared before the Baltimore County Board of Education, the County Council, county executive and even held hands around Bloomsbury to no avail.

Police are searching for a man and woman who might have used stolen credit cards to make purchases in the Baltimore metro area. The credit cards were stolen on June 14 from William S. James Elementary School in Abingdon, according to a statement released Friday by the Harford County Sheriff's Office. After the theft, the cards were fraudulently used in Abingdon, Bel Air and the Baltimore area, police said. Security camera footage show the man and woman driving a white Dodge Charger sedan.

They filed in the lobby of Martin's Valley Mansion in Cockeysville, some ramrod straight, others on canes and bent over walkers. They came poised to crack open fragrant memories of their days at School No. 59, more intimately known as Louisa May Alcott Elementary on Keyworth Avenue in the Park Heights section of Northwest Baltimore. The gathering on May 5 was No. 59's fifth all-school reunion since 1979 and, according to one exhausted planner, maybe the last. While high school and college reunions may be the norm, Irv Hamet said this grammar school get-together is part and parcel of the culture in the close-knit neighborhood of his childhood.

The pursuit and arrest of a burglary suspect disrupted dismissal at a Pasadena elementary school Thursday. Jason Thomas Donaldson, 27, of Severn, faces several burglary-related charges, police said. After a neighbor spotted him trying to break into a home in the 8400 block of Alvin Road, Donaldson led police on a nearly one-hour chase through the Lake Shore neighborhood and onto the grounds of Lake Shore Elementary. Anne Arundel County police responded shortly after 3 p.m. to a neighbor's report of an attempted burglary.

The Baltimore County school board voted Tuesday evening to build an elementary school in Mays Chapel despite angry opposition from neighbors. The 700-seat school is estimated to cost $20 million to $24 million and is expected to open within two to three years to relieve overcrowding in the York Road corridor. School system administrators believe that they will need about 1,000 new seats for elementary school students within the next several years. The board vote came after a contentious debate 24 hours earlier at a hearing where neighbors accused the school system of rushing to make a decision without considering other sites or other solutions for the overcrowding that has plagued the area for the past five years.

Baltimore police are at Windsor Hills Elementary/Middle School in Northwest Baltimore after a body of a young man was discovered on the edge of school grounds Friday morning. The school has been closed for the day. Anthony Guglielmi, a department spokesman, said the body if of a man 18 to 20 years old. It was found sometime between 7 and 7:30 a.m., before school opened for the day. Guglielmi did not know who made the discovery. The school is located in the 4100 block of Alto Road, several blocks from the heavily wooded Leakin Park, and south of Lake Ashburton.

After approving a design plan for an elementary school in the northeast region of Howard County, the Board of Education is moving forward with a site for the new school - just not the one previously discussed. The board unanimously selected a site along Ducketts Lane in Elkridge, less than two miles from the site initially proposed on Coca-Cola Drive in Hanover, at its meeting Tuesday, June 21. The site came recommended by Ken Roey, executive director of facilities, and Joel Gallihue, manager of school planning, and their staffs.

At least one student at George Washington Elementary in southwest Baltimore has been diagnosed with scarlet fever, according to the city health department. A letter was sent home to parents Thursday detailing the illness' symptoms. Scarlet fever is a common infection caused by streptococcus bacteria and spread by person-to-person contact, coughing and sneezing, according to the letter. The illness can be treated with antibiotics. If left untreated, complications such as rheumatic fever and kidney disease may ensue, the letter says.

When Lisa Moore searched outside her house in Jacksonville on Thursday for her 4-year-old daughter, she instead found a 2-year-old black bear. "I looked for her, turned the corner… I see this bear on its hind legs and it was trying to eat bird seed from a bird feeder" hanging in the tree, Moore said. After about 10 seconds watching the bear in awe, she said, "it hit me, where is my daughter?" Luckily, she was inside and, together, mother and daughter watched the bear hanging around a swing set, occasionally making his way to the bird feeder.

It was Dirty Finger Club Day at Linton Springs Elementary School, near Eldersburg. Out in the vegetable garden - one of a dozen "outdoor classrooms" in the meadows, wetlands and woodlands of school's spacious grounds - Anna Letaw, a volunteer who has been the dynamo behind Linton Springs' Environmental Education Program, was giving a kindergarten class a primer on gardening. "Oh, look what I found!" Letaw called out as she knelt. "An earthworm .... Can anybody tell me what earthworms do?"

At Germantown Elementary School in Annapolis, students receive physical education once a week. Officially, that is. Unofficially, students are engaging in the same level of activity as their "go-outside-and-play" parents of previous generations. At recess, before classes and after school — and in some cases even during classroom instruction — youngsters are getting workouts by playing traditional games, learning new ones and creating their own spinoff versions. Germantown Elementary is among the first schools in the area to implement a San Diego-based physical education program called SPARK, which stresses to children the importance of physical fitness, then provides grade-level equipment and instruction to back it up. SPARK officials said the program began in 1989 as a result of a study supported by the Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and San Diego State University.

Baltimore County schools Superintendent Dallas Dance plans to issue digital devices to middle- and high-school students and wants all children in the school system to graduate bilingual, believing it will make them globally competitive, he said in the county's first state of the schools address Thursday. "Earning a Baltimore County public schools diploma needs to have greater meaning," he told a crowd at Valley Mansion in Cockeysville. The superintendent hopes to see kindergartners learning world languages and older students carrying electronic devices within the next five years, he said in an interview Thursday.

Here are the five highest speeds recorded from November 2011 through December 2012. 1. Frederick Road (Manor Woods Elementary School) – 82 mph in a 40 mph zone 2. Rogers Avenue (Hollifield Elementary School) – 78 mph in a 35 mph zone 3. Centennial Lane (Centennial High School) – 74 mph in a 35 mph zone 4. Vollmerhausen Road (Bethel Christian Academy) – 60 mph in a 30 mph zone 5. Seneca Drive (Atholton Elementary School) – 55 mph in a 25 mph zone Source: Howard County Police Department

The Carson Scholars Fund announces that 425 students across the country have been named 2013 Carson Scholars. Each year the Fund recognizes a select group of high achieving students in fourth to 11th grade who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement and humanitarian qualities. Students receive a $1,000 college scholarship award and the coveted honor of being named a Carson Scholar. In addition, 714 students have renewed their Carson Scholar status. These previous winners have maintained high academic standards and a strong commitment to their communities and are being recognized for their continued efforts.

Perry Hall High School has been awarded a $35,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to assist in its efforts to recover from a shooting on the first day of school. George Roberts, principal of the high school in Baltimore County, said the school applied for the Project School Emergency Response to Violence grant shortly after the shooting took place. It will assist the school with bringing in part-time counselors, or temporary crisis counselors that could be used for tragic events, such as the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Roberts said.

State education officials are investigating possible testing violations at a Northeast Baltimore elementary school where in some cases 100 percent of students passed annual reading and math exams last year but where scores plunged by as much as half this year. Baltimore City schools CEO Andrés Alonso said this week that he had asked state officials to investigate the drops in performance by third- and fourth-graders at Abbottston Elementary, a school so highly regarded that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited last year to celebrate the students' achievement and praised it as a model for the country.

A second-grade student at an Anne Arundel County elementary school was suspended for two days Friday after school officials said he chewed a breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun, an incident that has drawn widespread national media attention. The school, Park Elementary in Brooklyn Park, sent a letter home to parents regarding the incident. The child's father, William "B.J. " Welch, alerted local media to the incident, and Welch and his son Josh, 7, soon found themselves on CNN and Fox News, while conservative bloggers across the country opined on the matter.

The traffic impact study for Mays Chapel Elementary School that was published on the Baltimore County Public Schools web site Feb. 20 is seriously flawed ("Balto. Co. eschews facts in Mays Chapel Elementary decision," Feb. 19). Cullane Court, which is featured prominently in the study maps, has 11 residences. However, the study's maps failed to include Straffan Drive, a road bordering the school between Cullane Court and Roundwood Road. There are 110 residences on Straffan Drive, and the rear of most of them abut the current deeded open space park, where the county plans to build the school.