Hampstead Hill

Baltimore school Superintendent Walter G. Amprey today replaced the principal of Hampstead Hill Middle School, after reversing the school's decision to send more than 100 students home until Monday because of a fight yesterday.Saying the students' discipline was inappropriate, Amprey ordered Principal Margaret C. Wicks placed on administrative duty at the system's North Avenue headquarters pending a decision on her future.Wicks was replaced by Kevin Harahan, who was named acting principal at the East Baltimore school.

Baltimore's school superintendent scheduled meetings today with Hampstead Hill Middle School students and their parents after more than 100 children were suspended yesterday.The mass suspension followed a fight between two boys that deteriorated into a continuing disruption inside the East Baltimore school.Superintendent Walter G. Amprey ordered the meetings after he criticized the decision to suspend the sixth-graders. An unidentified assistant principal, with several teachers in support, decided to send the students home until Monday with a letter detailing their conduct.

In this dim little hallway at Hampstead Hill Middle School, Principal Margaret Wicks draws a time line in the air."Those things," she says, and then her voice halts for a tick of the clock.Nobody has to ask what she means by "those things" -- last spring's Patterson Park baseball bat clubbing of Pedro Lugo that electrified the city, the daily trashing of this Southeast Baltimore neighborhood that went on for years while nobody in power paid attention, and the bitterness in the streets each morning and afternoon between students and residents.

He was introduced simply as Pedro Lugo. At Hampstead Hill Middle School, everyone knows who Pedro Lugo is.Last May, three youngsters took Mr. Lugo's baseball bat from him as he walked across Patterson Park. They beat him with it and split his skull.One of those three was from Hampstead Hill Middle School. Witnesses said a crowd of other students watched. Expedito "Pedro" Lugo nearly died.Yesterday, a friend wheeled Mr. Lugo onto the scarred wooden stage at Hampstead Hill and the auditorium filled with applause from students.

Moving uneasily in his wheelchair, Expedito "Pedro" Lugo smiled and offered his left hand to a visitor today at Hampstead Hill Middle School."My leg still shakes a little, too, but I feel good," he said. He smiled again. He spoke slowly and in broken English, and often through a Spanish translator."What do you call this," he asked, placing his right hand on his left shoulder. "Yes, my shoulder is stiff, too. But I am happy to be alive."And then he gave a thumbs-up.Lugo, 24, who in May was severely beaten with his own baseball bat by three teen-agers, had asked to speak to the students to thank them for their concern.

Last spring, residents of the neighborhood surrounding Hampstead Hill Middle School, furious over the baseball-bat beating of Expedito "Pedro" Lugo, visited the school -- and found it horrible.There was paint peeling off the walls in sheets, an interior made dim by faulty light fixtures, bad plumbing and bad morale, recalls Ed Rutkowski, president of the Baltimore-Linwood Neighborhood Association. This was where the youngsters who had allegedly cheered on the beating -- one student stands accused of taking part in it -- spent their days.

The old woman stands in the shadowy doorway of her row house and does not venture into the Technicolor sunlight on Ellwood Avenue. The two kids across the street are snatched off the front steps and removed to the safety of a living room. The old man on the sidewalk says he'd like to smack somebody, except for the lawsuits.It is five minutes before the final bell will sound on the first day of class at Hampstead Hill Middle School last Tuesday, and a neighborhood with memories of outrages is bracing itself.

Baltimore school board members are having second thoughts about their decision earlier this month to allow an educational television program that includes commercials to be aired in city schools.After hearing from two parent groups that criticized the decision last night, board members conceded that they didn't know as much about Whittle Educational Network's Channel One program as they'd thought.One board member, Linda C. Janey, was surprised to learn that schools would not get to keep the video equipment provided free as part of Channel One. Another, Stelios Spiliadis, was dismayed to hear that parents had not been consulted -- at least, the Baltimore City Council of PTAs had not been consulted.

THE baseball-bat beating of Expedito "Pedro" Lugo in Patterson Park again has focused attention on Hampstead Hill Middle School, a place where all the ingredients of trouble have been in place for years.I live in the neighborhood, and I know.It's a school whose students seem out of control. The principal, Preston Roney, seems unable or unwilling to keep his students in check. Other middle and junior high principals in the city literally control the area around their buildings before and after school.

In a little corner of St. Elizabeth's Roman Catholic Church in East Baltimore, James Radowski holds up one brown hiking shoe. He says someone threw it at his head.''Those school kids,'' he says.''Tell him about the folding chair they threw,'' says a woman one seat away.''Tell him about the textbooks,'' says someone else.Voices are muted in their anger, because this is a church. But the voices will be rising through this entire evening as the church fills nearly to capacity. East Baltimore has been mobilized, first by the baseball bat clubbing of Expedito ''Pedro'' Lugo, then by the outpouring of voices declaring a general condition of unsafe streets every time the kids from Hampstead Hill Middle School make their way through the neighborhood.