Embry

WE GET MAIL:On Oct. 11, we expressed disappointment that spring test scores were about equally dismal at two city elementary schools tracked through the 1997-1998 school year by Sun reporters. Surely, we had thought, City Springs Elementary, with its proven Direct Instruction program, would have outpaced Lyndhurst Elementary, with an unstructured approach to reading instruction.Robert C. Embry Jr., president of the Abell Foundation and former president of the city and state school boards, suggests that might be what is happening.

A broad cross-section of Baltimoreans, ranging from community activists to educational and civic leaders, makes up the list of 21 finalists for a new panel to revamp city schools, whose names will be announced today by Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke.Three current school board members, the head of a major foundation, a former Girl Scout executive and a past City Council member are on the list.The current school board president, Arnita Hicks McArthur, a professor at Baltimore City Community College; the current vice president, Charles L. Maker; and newly named board member C. William Struever, a well-known developer and parent of two city public school students, are among those under consideration for the nine seats on the new board.

Two years after C. William Struever's real estate empire collapsed and the once-ubiquitous developer dropped off Baltimore's radar, the urban visionary has reappeared as a managing director of a new company, working on the same kinds of projects that helped make his name. Struever is one of the founders of Cross Street Partners, a real estate venture made up of 28 employees who all once worked for Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse, the company that changed Baltimore's landscape and that of other East Coast cities before coming apart in the throes of the recession, leaving a trail of lawsuits and unfinished developments.

A glimpse over the television director's shoulder shows the next transformation involving the corner of West Fayette and Monroe. Two video screens, each the size of a compact disc box, display views from two cameras capturing a scene distilled from a book detailing a year in a West Baltimore neighborhood overrun by illegal drugs.Actors are portraying the sadness of a real father and the alienation of a real teen-age son. In take after take the boy turns away from his father's soft-spoken plea to stay in school, stepping off the curb outside the corner bar, turning his back on his old man, dropping his dreadlocked head and walking out of the picture.

The Abell Foundation has awarded the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office a grant worth nearly $128,000, which will be used to "double the capacity" of an anti-prostitution program, top prosecutor Gregg Bernstein announced Thursday. One of his deputy state's attorney's, Elizabeth Embry, is the daughter of foundation President Robert Embry, who could not be reached for comment. Roughly 1,200 prostitution arrests are logged in Baltimore each year, according to the State's Attorney's Office, which launched the "Specialized Prostitution Diversion" program in 2009 to help offenders break the recidivist cycle, by offering them drug, health and employment services.

Not content with mandating what children learn in the classroom, the State Board of Education now seeks to send mandates to parents, too. It wants to require -- in the name of better education for children, we suppose -- that all television sets sold in Maryland be equipped with blocking devices so parents can set limits on the amount of time their children watch TV.Why do school board President Robert C. Embry Jr. and Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick wish...

Gregg L. Bernstein announced a fresh leadership team for the Baltimore prosecutor's office Monday morning, shortly after being sworn in as city state's attorney, officially ending incumbent Patricia C. Jessamy's 15-year reign. As previously announced, former federal prosecutor George J. Hazel and Elizabeth Embry, a former assistant state's attorney and assistant city solicitor, will make up two-thirds of the three-person team. Hazel left the U.S. Attorney's Office to become Bernstein's chief assistant state's attorney, while Embry was named executive assistant state's attorney for policy and planning.

Baltimore officials are taking steps to adapt a rigorous private school curriculum -- credited with improving two city public schools -- for use in every elementary school in the system.According to documents obtained by The Sun, city and Abell Foundation officials have been discussing plans to write a curriculum for students in kindergarten through eighth grade that would be modeled after that of the private Calvert School."For so long, there has been the criticism and the concern that we were not taking greater advantage of the success of the program" at Barclay Elementary-Middle and Carter G. Woodson Elementary, schools Superintendent Walter G. Amprey said yesterday.

Not long ago, these houses were the proudest on their blocks, a cornerstone of Baltimore's renaissance in its poorest neighborhoods.The 2,800 newly renovated rowhouses were scattered throughout the inner city. They were supposed to be new homes for public-housing tenants.Today, 22 years after the first houses were rehabilitated, about 300 of them stand battered and vacant, many stripped by vandals, without doors or windows to protect what little is left inside. Once the nicest houses on the block, they are now eyesores.

Many of the faces have changed for Douglass in the 362 days since the Ducks vanquished Walbrook to seize the area's top boys basketball ranking, but yesterday they produced the same winning result. Without any of the five starters from last season's Class 3A state championship team, second-ranked Douglass overcame a third-quarter deficit against No. 13 Walbrook and cruised to its 32nd consecutive victory, 78-61, in a Baltimore City League game. Lonnie Embry had 15 points, six rebounds, five assists, and went 6-for-7 at the free-throw line.