K 8 Schools

Karen Zipp has been teaching math for two decades, but it took her four hours to prepare for a lesson last week. Getting pupils to graph algebraic equations was not new to the Diggs-Johnson Middle School teacher. The hard part was the unfamiliar teaching method that the school system asked Zipp to use - and the dozen pairs of adult eyes watching her from the back of the classroom. Zipp is one of many middle-school math and language arts teachers being trained by the Baltimore school system to demonstrate to other educators a new teaching method that emphasizes pupil participation.

In a first step toward solving middle school crowding in Baltimore County, school officials and parents at Woodbridge Elementary are proposing to add a sixth grade to their school next year, forming the county's only elementary with a sixth grade.The plan, developed by parents and presented by administrators to the school board last night, comes amid months of controversy over proposals to handle bulging middle schools by making elementary schools serve kindergarten through eighth grade.The county's elementary schools go up to grade five.

Pimlico Middle School is big enough to accommodate 1,818 pupils, but its enrollment is only 659. The school was built in 1956, and its last major renovation was in 1978. In the cafeteria, a door is off its hinge and rotting, and the ceiling over what the principal thinks was once a snack bar is caving in. It is stifling inside during these first weeks of classes, but the building is so old that the cost of installing air conditioning is prohibitive. "The kids complain about the heat all day long," Principal Brenda Abrams says.

Turn back the hands of Doomsday Clock Kudos to The Sun for the editorial describing and bringing attention to the advance of the Doomsday Clock ("It's late," Jan. 18). However, one connection the editorial did not make explicit is the one between global warming and its effects on the national security situation of nuclear-armed countries. As populations are displaced, and ecosystems and access to resources such as food and water change, it is not difficult to imagine these situations pushing countries into a nuclear "resource war."

Blame it on hormones, tougher standards or just the challenge of teaching rambunctious adolescents: The enviable math and reading scores enjoyed by elementary schools across the state have eluded middle schools. The Maryland School Assessment test results released this week show that the percentage of pupils making the grade falls sharply as children move to middle school. While more than three-quarters of fourth-graders were declared "proficient" or "advanced" in math, only half of eighth-graders were.

A majority of the Baltimore City Council called on the school board last night to delay implementing the systemwide rezoning plan a year.The plan is so riddled with problems that it cannot be fixed by the beginning of the school year in September, council members said at a special joint meeting at school headquarters.The plan has drawn sharp criticism from parents and politicians, who blame the board and school staffers for drafting it without sampling public opinion.Some school staffers are blaming the council for the plan's problems.

Facing rising costs and falling enrollments, the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore will close 13 of its 64 schools at the end of the academic year, officials told employees and families on Wednesday. Parents reacted with anguish and anger as word spread of 12 K-8 schools and one high school, Cardinal Gibbons School. All are in Baltimore or Baltimore County. "This is a major blow," Ted Ewachiw said at Sacred Heart of Mary School in East Baltimore, where he picked up his two children after school Wednesday.

Facing rising costs and falling enrollments, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore will close 13 of its 64 schools at the end of the academic year, officials told employees and families Wednesday. Parents reacted with anguish and anger as word spread that 12 K-8 schools and one high school, Cardinal Gibbons in the Morrell Park neighborhood of West Baltimore, would be shut down in June. All are in Baltimore or Baltimore County. "This is a major blow," Ted Ewachiw said at Sacred Heart of Mary School in East Baltimore, where he picked up his two children after school Wednesday.

EARLIER THIS month, the Baltimore County Board of Education refused to let parents in Woodbridge Valley, a community near Woodlawn, pay $20,000 to rent a portable classroom -- the first step, they hoped, toward converting their elementary into the county's first kindergarten through eighth-grade school. It was the right decision, but I doubt the many parents with candy bars and pizza kits waiting in the refrigerator to be sold understand why.Why, at a time when schools desperately seek parental involvement and use donations for everything from stadium lights to computers, should parents not be allowed to help buy the kind of school they want?

Emboldened by rising test scores, new leadership and studies showing that Maryland is grossly underfunding public education, the Baltimore school system has asked the governor for nearly $363 million in extra aid to support a range of programs next year. The additional money would be used in part for continued academic reforms at the elementary level as well as dozens of new ones in middle and high schools. The request occurs several months before a state-appointed task force studying equity in education funding is expected to release a report calling for a sharp boost in aid. City school officials are, in effect, trying to piggy-back on preliminary studies prepared for the Commission on Education Finance, Equity and Excellence, known as the Thornton Commission, which say the state needs to spend as much as $2 billion more on public education.