Harlem Park

For three years, the National Committee for Citizens in Education worked to help 156 families whose children attended Harlem Park Middle School in West Baltimore. The program, "With and For Parents," was financed by the Prudential Foundation. In these excerpts from Network, the committee's newsletter, the director of "With and For Parents" reflects on the experience.Ms. ------ always apologized for her home when I visited. I was thinking as she did so that nothing wrong with her home was her fault.

ON THE SITE... McDonough calls for 'solutions summit' on downtown crime :  Del. Patrick L. McDonough, a Republican from Harford and Baltimore counties,  is now calling on the mayor to resign unless she holds a "solutions summit" on mobs of black teens in the Inner Harbor. Two injured, one killed in Baltimore violence : Police found a 58-year-old man dead of a gunshot wound to the head  in the Harlem Park neighborhood of West Baltimore, at about 12:15 a.m. O'Malley to sign tax hike, arsenic ban, ethics bill :  Governor, legislative leaders will hold a marathon ceremony during which O'Malley will sign hundreds of bills into law. Arundel council commends police, not chief, for drop in crime :  The council passed the resolution only after approving an amendment specifically removing Police Chief James E. Teare Sr.'s name from the language.

Superintendent Walter G. Amprey is removing the principal of Harlem Park Middle School in West Baltimore, one of nine city public schools being run by a private company in a high-profile experiment.Dr. Amprey told school faculty about the impending change yesterday, a day after Principal Nicky Johnson told teachers she would be replaced, according to Nat Harrington, school spokesman.Ms. Johnson, who took over as principal at Harlem Park this school year, formerly was principal at Abbottston Elementary in North Baltimore, where she did an "excellent" job, said Mr. Harrington.

Funeral services were held Wednesday for Michael Carter, a longtime Baltimore city schools advocate whose outspokeness landed him the position in the administration of CEO Andres Alonso as the director of the district's parent and community engagement office.  We wrote an obituary last week on Carter, who lost his battle with cancer last week, which included solemn, but colorful remarks and remembrances from a host of city school officials and...

The Harlem Park community has formed a coalition to push the neighborhood's application to become one of the "village centers" in Baltimore's $100 million empowerment zone program.Baltimore's proposal calls for dividing the empowerment zones into village centers of no more than 9,000 residents. In each center, one school would provide morning, evening and weekend educational, recreational and cultural activities.Delores Farmer, president of the new Coalition to Empower Harlem Park, said the village center designation could bring $6 million to lead revitalization efforts in the West Baltimore community.

City police identified two recent homicide victims yesterday as detectives took on yet another case - that of a man found fatally shot in the Harlem Park neighborhood. Terry Cheeks, 21, of the 1300 block of N. Calhoun St. was shot by an unknown assailant shortly before 1 a.m. in the 1800 block of W. Lanvale St., police said. In an unrelated killing, police identified James Leroy Burgess, 27, of the 2700 block of Pennsylvania Ave., as the man fatally shot about 3 a.m. Monday in the 2700 block of E. Madison St. A woman found partially nude and beaten to death early Monday was identified as Daniel D. Fell, 18, of the 2800 block of Fleetwood Ave. in Northeast Baltimore.

Barbara C. Ferguson almost moved to Glen Burnie.But then in 1972, a death in the family drew her back to Harlem Park, the West Baltimore neighborhood where she grew up, after living in East Baltimore. She has been there ever since.Harlem Park is poor and 99 percent black. The typical row house sells for about $25,000 and rents average a little over $200 a month, according to the 1990 census.But numbers don't tell the whole story, says Mrs. Ferguson, a 54-year-old social worker and longtime community activist.

TESSERACT is the name given to the program under which a profit-making Minneapolis firm has contracted to run nine inner-city Baltimore schools. The word, derived from a children's book, refers to the "fifth dimensional corridor for traveling to a destination one could never otherwise reach."But judging by the company's first exposure last week at Harlem Park Middle School, Tesseract has yet to enter the first and second dimensions.A group of about 100 parents expressed anger -- not just confusion -- over the plan to turn their school over to Educational Alternatives Inc. for five years.

Jasmine L. Gunthorpe, a community activist in Harlem Park, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, died Tuesday of an aneurysm at University of Maryland Medical Center. She was 43 and lived in Rosemont in West Baltimore.At her death, the former welfare recipient was executive assistant at Harlem Park Revitalization Corp., where she had worked since 1995.Ms. Gunthorpe was a driving force behind Harlem Park Academy, a community-based school that was created in 1997 by the school system's New Schools Initiative.

Amid trash heaps and midday 40-ounce-beer drinkers, NationsBank Vice President Maria Johnson stood in Harlem Park and outlined the bank's goal of converting 24 blocks of urban blight into suburbanlike homes, complete with cul-de-sacs, manicured lawns and tree-lined streets. "This is no place I would send my child to play, but there is a percentage of the [suburban] population that we can bring back here," said Johnson, standing in a neighborhood that has lost 25 percent of its population since 1980.

Michael Penny Carter, a longtime public schools and community activist who had been director of family and community engagement for the Baltimore school system, died Tuesday of prostate cancer at a sister's home in West Baltimore. The Harlem Park resident was 63. "Michael's death is both a personal and professional loss. He meant a great deal to me," said Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso. "He was a great man who cared so much about neighborhoods and schools, and he brought his own vision to his work.

A man was found dead in the 700 block of N. Carrollton Ave. shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday, police said in a statement. The unidentified man had been shot, police said. The shooting took place in the West Baltimore neighborhood of Harlem Park. No other information was available Wednesday morning from the Baltimore Police Department, which is investigating the shooting. The immediate area remained blocked off early Wednesday as the investigation continued. steve.kilar@baltsun.com twitter.com/stevekilar

Inez Alice Chappell, a former Pennsylvania Avenue manicurist and thoroughbred racing fan, died Nov. 2 of heart failure at Seasons Hospice at Northwest Hospital Center. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 86. The daughter of an a-rab and a homemaker, Miss Chappell was born and raised in West Baltimore and Harlem Park. She was a 1943 graduate of the old Frederick Douglass High School and Cortez Peters Business School. For more than two decades, Miss Chappell worked as a manicurist at Pennsylvania Avenue barbershops.

Steps from a weathered bench proclaiming Baltimore the "Greatest City in America," a pool of blood marked the spot where a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot early Wednesday. Officers said Bruce Benn was shot in the head at about 1 a.m. while standing in the 1900 block of W. Lombard St., and taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead at about 3 a.m. Police did not provide additional details or indicate whether they knew of a motive or suspects. On Wednesday morning, people milling about the trash-strewn Carrollton Ridge neighborhood where the shooting occurred said they didn't know anything about what happened, while a police officer stood on a street corner as two detectives assigned to the case canvassed the area.

Police have identified a 45-year-old man fatally shot this week in West Baltimore as Kevin Seymore Lewis of the 600 block of N. Carey St., in the Harlem Park neighborhood. Lewis was shot in the side about 11:40 p.m. Monday in the 600 block of N. Carrollton Ave., about a block away from his home. He died at Maryland Shock Trauma Center a short time later. Lewis' wallet and cell phone were still with him when officers arrived, and police did not have a motive. Detectives are investigating and anyone with information is asked to call 410-396-2100.

Madeline Leonia "Mae" Pullen, a longtime Harlem Park-Lafayette Square activist who fought for senior housing options and public safety, health and education issues for residents, died Oct. 7 in her sleep at Caton Manor Nursing Home. She was 90. The daughter of a carpenter and a homemaker, Madeline Leonia Brown was born in Sparrows Point and raised on Carey Street. She was a 1938 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School, and the next year married her high school sweetheart, Francis Pullen Sr., who later became a U.S. Post Office supervisor.

The eyes of dozens of Harlem Park children twinkled yesterday when William Henderson wheeled a shiny new deluxe hot dog cart into a concrete park lined with ruined homes, vacant lots and drug addicts. Fatima Knight, 11, said the cart was the nicest thing she had seen in Harlem Park since five years ago, when she got a new pair of roller skates. Her brother, 10-year-old Rasheem, said it was the nicest thing he had seen since last summer, when neighborhood boys let him touch a new dirt bike.

About 30 students clacked away their waning minutes of class time in Harlem Park Middle School's darkened computer lab, their faces illuminated by the colorful computer games' graphics.Though the students were hard at play, lab manager Deborah Hardy assured guests that the students' 15 minutes of free time was a reward for finishing 30 minutes of algebra.The reward system is a hallmark at Harlem Park, where 98 of 1,212 students have achieved perfect attendance so far this school year, about 70 more than last year.