Farfel

CURRENT volunteer news and needs:Baltimore County Historical Society, located in Cockeysville, needs volunteers to assist with research and entering theinformation into the society's computer. Volunteers will also help expand hours of the society, which are currently from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. For more information or to volunteer, call 666-1876.Baltimore Goodwill Industries -- the Goodwill collection center, located in the Hereford Shopping Center at I-83 and Mount Carmel Road, will be open to accept donations from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the first Saturday of every month through December.

Responding to massive public opposition, the Baltimore school board will conduct a special meeting Tuesday night to receive a revised school rezoning plan from the administration.Tuesday's public meeting was announced yesterday morning shortly after six of eight school board members aborted what was to have been a nonpublic meeting with Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke at 7:30 a.m.Rezoning -- hotly debated throughout the city since mid-December -- was to have been among the topics talked about yesterday, said Clinton R. Coleman, spokesman for Mr. Schmoke, although the specifics were unclear.

Maybe it was the nuisance of a court-appointed oversight committee charged with reviewing staffing decisions for their effect on special education services.Maybe it was the recent scolding from a House committee in Annapolis, when delegates expressed amazement at how little progress had been made in instituting management improvements in city schools.Maybe it was simply the embarrassment -- for the school system and for a mayor facing re-election -- at having, once again, the only schools on the state Department of Education's list of targets for reconstitution and possible state takeover.

State and Baltimore educators are expected to announce today that they're working now as partners in planning academic reforms ordered Feb. 1 for Arnett J. Brown Middle, Calverton Middle and Furman Templeton Elementary schools.The agreement ends a two-week standoff during which city officials resisted a state order to shake up the threelow-achieving city schools.Their decision came as two legislators appealed to the governor for $1.5 million for those school reforms this week.Baltimore no longer will bar state information-gathering teams from visiting the schools, Phillip H. Farfel, school board president, said yesterday.

Superintendent Walter G. Amprey is ordering the demotions and transfers of principals at 27 of Baltimore's poorest performing public schools in what he describes as a reform effort to improve the quality of education in the district.The reassignments -- set for June and in the midst of a volatile mayoral race -- could prove to be among the most controversial changes proposed in his four-year tenure as superintendent. Many of the schools have been selected by Dr. Amprey and his cabinet, but the school board has not yet been told of the scope of the changes.

Baltimore's school board severed its contracts with Education Alternatives Inc. yesterday, officially halting its nationally watched school privatization experiment after 3 1/2 years.The board set March 4 as the date that the pioneering business-education partnership will end and also canceled a related contract covering services provided by EAI's partner, Johnson Controls.Its two unanimous votes provoked an angry outcry from 200 parents, students and EAI employees who filled the auditorium at Coldstream Park Elementary School.

Baltimore Superintendent Walter G. Amprey last night pulled out of the running for New York City's top schools post, saying he's committed to remaining here to complete his ambitious reform efforts.In a one-page letter sent by facsimile to the New York school board, Dr. Amprey called his decision "particularly difficult.""I have been convinced that the work which I have begun in Baltimore would not be successfully completed were I to leave at this time," the letter said."I am a product of the Baltimore City Public Schools and not only see education as my life's work, but consider education in Baltimore inextricably linked to that mission."

Education Alternatives Inc., the company managing nine Baltimore public schools, wants to change the way it is paid when it renegotiates a five-year contract with the city.John T. Golle, EAI's chief executive, said yesterday the company wants to be paid by the city on the basis of its actual costs in managing the schools rather than the systemwide average cost per pupil, which is $5,847 this year. EAI pays back the city 7.5 percent to cover administrative costs.The Minneapolis company has been criticized for having more money to spend, on average, than other Baltimore schools, and company officials believe a different financing method would be easier for the public to understand.

Viola Hughes was an honor-roll student at Dunbar High School whose family was desperate to escape from the drug dealing and shootings of Baltimore's Lafayette Courts public housing high-rises. So when her mother responded to an ad in the paper and moved the family into a $450-a-month rowhouse in West Baltimore, Hughes was thrilled to have fled that dangerous environment. What she didn't know was that moving into the home at 1713 N. Monroe St. would make her family guinea pigs in an experiment that a panel of judges compared last week to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies from 1932 to 1972.

MAYOR KURT L. SCHMOKE, an early supporter of Education Alternatives Inc., hadn't counted on this. One reason he felt comfortable giving teachers a big pay raise this year was belief EAI would agree to a reduction in its $44 million fee. He negotiated for weeks thinking an agreement would occur. When it became apparent that it wouldn't, he found himself painted into a corner he helped create. The teachers had their raise. Settling a special education lawsuit was costly. The legislature was withholding millions.