Jessup Elementary

School seeks volunteers to help put up wallsThe Jessup Elementary School Wall Project is seeking volunteers to help put up walls in the school over the next couple of years.The group has secured materials and licensed contractors for the renovations, which will include a sprinkler system for the entire school, walls in the existing sixth-grade pods, new carpeting and a computer lab.All of the work will be performed by volunteers, and there will be no cost to the county or individuals.The group is asking each parent of children attending the school to donate one weekend over the summer to work on the project.

Alice Hawes Pollard, who taught public school students for more than 40 years, died of a heart attack Saturday at the Hermitage retirement community in Alexandria, Va. The former Pikesville resident was 98. Miss Pollard was born in Hanover, Va., and raised on her family's farm in Aylett, Va. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1927 from the State Teachers College at Harrisonburg, now James Madison University. She began teaching in Virginia public schools in the late 1920s, and after moving to Washington in 1939 taught in Prince George's and Montgomery counties' schools.

In Baltimore City Police seek suspects in shooting death of unidentified man Baltimore police are looking for suspects in the shooting death of an unidentified man found at 7:30 a.m. yesterday in the 2700 block of Boone St., east of Greenmount Avenue. The man was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, said police spokesman Martin Bartness. Shooting victim identified as North Baltimore man Baltimore police have identified a man found shot to death Friday behind Abbottston Elementary School in the 1300 block of Gorsuch Ave. as Charles Williams Jr., 20, of the 3300 block of Westerwald Ave. in North Baltimore.

In a sense, every Protestant in the county has cause to celebrate with the 17 Lutheran churches holding a Festival Reformation Service Sunday night.The service, which includes an orchestra, a massed choir with bells and a children's choir, marks the anniversary of the day on Oct. 31, 1517, when Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the doors of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, sparking the beginning of the Reformation.The rest is history, in the most literal sense, as many Protestant denominations developed from that movement.

Leah Susan Ek Asplin, a student at Meade Senior High School whose life was defined by her concern for others, died Tuesday of a brain tumor at her home in Severn. She was 16. She had been ill for 14 months with glioblastoma multiforme, a rare and extremely malignant brain tumor."Leah was always concerned about other people, even in her dying," said her father, the Rev. David R. Asplin, pastor of Christ The Servant Lutheran Church in Severn. "She was a very loving person who worried how her family and friends would be hurt by her death."

County officials, answering parents and faculty concerned over a spate of illnesses at two county schools, issued clean bills of health yesterday for both buildings.Officials said they could find no dangerous conditions at Jessup Elementary school, despite reports that 10 teachers and aides have been diagnosed with various forms of cancer.After tests for radon gas levels and air and water quality, health officials said they could establish no link between the cancer and the school building.

It was an offer the Anne Arundel County school board jus couldn't turn down -- $500,000 worth of renovations to Jessup Elementary School that won't require a dime from the school system construction budget.After delays, red tape and lengthy discussion surrounding who would be liable for faulty work or injury to parent and community volunteers who would do the work, the school board voted 5-0 last night in favor of its first such all-volunteer project.Board members Michael A. Pace and student member Jay Witcher were absent.

Jessup Elementary School parents deserve credit. Not only have they organized Anne Arundel County's first volunteer school renovation, they've conquered the mountain of school bureaucracy that stood in their way.For a while, it seemed the school board was determined to squelch the group's volunteer spirit. Parents wanted to donate $500,000 in time, materials and money to renovate the school, but instead of enthusiasm, they were met with worried frowns, questions about liability and other red tape.

Anne Arundel County's first volunteer school renovation project -- which would have saved taxpayers $500,000 -- is on the skids because school officials did a poor job of directing the volunteers.Hundreds of Jessup Elementary parents and business people had expected to be building walls by now.But the school system's lack of communication almost certainly has doomed any chance of the work being completed before classes resume in September. It may have discouraged the volunteers enough to make them abandon the project all together.