Hammond Middle School

Tra, la, 'tis almost May, the lusty month of May, that darlin month when everyone goes blissfully astray . . . with apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein.Maybe in Camelot knights went blissfully astray. Here in Savage, we just go astray.This is such a schizophrenic month. When I want to do nothing other than to look at the sky and daydream, I see the gutters need to be repaired. So, do I, like the responsible ant in the fable, repair the gutters, or like the grasshopper, laze away the sunny afternoons?

Paul Menard was so nervous he almost hoped the long-delayed space shuttle Columbia would suffer a few more delays.The 14-year-old Hammond High School freshman was feeling the effects of a major responsibility. He would be asking the first question in an exchange between students from Howard and Prince George's counties and astronauts on board Columbia.But when the moment came, at about 12:15 p.m. Friday, and Hammond Middle School science teacher Eugene E. Hudson began his introduction, "This is Greenbelt . . ."

After six years near Route 108 in Clarksville, a 19th-century schoolhouse could find a permanent home in Elkridge.The county Recreation and Parks Department hopes to move the Pfeiffer Corner Schoolhouse from the edge of the Middle Patuxent Environmental Area to Rockburn Branch Park, the site of three other historical structures.The school would become "more of a destination" by being placed in the 400-acre park, said senior park planner Clara Gouin.Park officials aim to move the school by 1996.

It was an "Aha!" experience, the kind where you say to yourself, "So that's what they're talking about, that's what they meant."I was disabled for a week. No, I was "differently hobbled" for a week -- in other words, I could not walk or put any weight on my foot, because of a temporary heel spur.Great, thought I, a week of pampering myself, of eating chocolates in bed surrounded by cheap novels, of getting to those projects I never have time for, such as sewing new drapes and ironing the lace tablecloths.

The recent report that someone costumed as a clown is hiding behind bushes and enticing or frightening children in an East Columbia apartment complex was certainly unnerving. Residents of the Stevens Forest Apartments are left to wonder anxiously, what kind of nut would masquerade in floppy shoes and a green wig? Will he be caught? It's a Batman movie come to life, where the ne'er-do-wells dress in macabre get-ups.As unnerving as that item, another story yesterday was even more disturbing.

Parents of students who live in Longfellow, Beaverbrook and Hobbit's Glen urged the Howard County school board last night to shift their neighborhoods into the Wilde Lake High School district.Their statements at last night's public hearing echoed those made by Wilde Lake parents the previous night.Longfellow parent Jim Harkness called the redistricting proposal "the most fiscally responsible decision. And it directly addresses the core problem of overcrowding at Centennial [High School] and the under-enrollment at Wilde Lake."

Students at River Hill High School who were forced to transfer from Glenelg High School in the fall might get a chance to return there for the 1997-1998 school year, according to a proposal discussed last night during a work session of the Howard County school board.The board also continued to struggle with setting boundary lines for the new elementary school in Ellicott City -- adding two more proposals to the already controversial debate.River Hill students might be permitted to return to Glenelg because River Hill's enrollment this year exceeded expectations, said school board member Stephen Bounds.

The lawyer for a former Howard County special-education teacher who was convicted in August of third-degree sex offense involving a 15-year-old boy is scheduled to ask a Circuit Court judge tomorrow to release his client from a detention center because of an undisclosed medical condition. Kirsten Ann Kinley, 27, is in the Howard County Detention Center, where she was sentenced to serve 18 months. "Ideally, I would like to have her released," said Thomas Morrow, Kinley's attorney. "She is having a difficult time due to a variety of medical conditions."

The jury trial for Joseph Samuel Ellis, the former Glenelg High School history teacher accused of having inappropriate sexual contact with several female students, is scheduled to begin tomorrow in Howard County Circuit Court. Ellis, 26, of Elkridge, is charged with sex abuse of a minor, two counts of a fourth-degree sex offense, indecent exposure, displaying obscene material to a minor and misusing a telephone for obscene purposes. Police arrested Ellis last Jan. 8, after students accused him of various crimes: exposing himself to one student in a classroom, sending inappropriate computer messages to another and meeting a third girl in a park to provide her with alcohol.

A domestic feud at a Laurel town house led to a fight Sunday in which a well-known 17-year-old youth allegedly stabbed his mother's live-in boyfriend to death, county police said.Charged as an adult with first-degree murder is Matthew Lee Garvey, a Laurel resident who made headlines in 1987 after he lost a leg at a Laurel car wash that came under fire for employing underage workers.The victim, John Joseph Robertson, 28, of the 9500 block of Sylvan Still Road, was stabbed in the chest with a kitchen knife during a confrontation with the youth, police said.