K 8 Schools

IN ANNE ARUNDEL County, they're just about finished converting all the junior highs to middle schools -- just as parents and educators are starting to ask whether middle schools are as good an idea as everyone thought 20 years ago.Is the middle school destined to go the way of open-space classrooms and Dick-and-Jane readers? It's far too early to say. But in education, what goes around often comes around. We tend to roll our eyes as educational trends come and go, but what else should we expect in an ever-changing world?

Woodbridge Elementary School will add a sixth grade next year, the Baltimore County school board decided last night, marking the first step in a broader push by parents to keep children in neighborhood schools through middle school.The action, which will keep about 60 sixth-graders a year at Woodbridge -- which now ends at grade five -- comes in response to a parent proposal to ease crowding at Southwest Academy and keep Woodbridge Valley children in their neighborhood through eighth grade.

Cedarmere Elementary School parents never recovered from the Baltimore County school board's decision seven years ago to redistrict their children out of their community, from crowded Franklin Middle to Deer Park Middle in Randallstown.Black community leaders never forgot, either -- especially the vehemence with which white parents opposed the move to a school in a mostly black neighborhood.Now, the controversy is resurfacing as residents in the Cedarmere area, with the help of local politicians, push to move their children back to Reisterstown -- saying that the redistricting has damaged community cohesiveness and reduced housing values.

AMIDST MANY promises in his Chicago acceptance speech, President Clinton pledged ''an unprecedented commitment from the national government to increase school construction.'' This statement is good news -- and bad.The good news is the acknowledgement at the highest level that school construction is a problem of monster dimension with the potential to plunge already strapped education budgets right over a financial cliff.The bad news is that the chances for significant federal relief are slim.

Frustrated by what he sees as meddling from City Hall, Baltimore school board member John S. Ward has quit, just one year after he joined the board to fill out the term of a former member.Mr. Ward, a retired educator, resigned effective last Friday, despite a plea from Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke that he reconsider. His term was due to expire at the end of this year.Mr. Ward joined the board last January, after serving 13 years as an administrator in Baltimore County and 20 years as a teacher, principal and administrator in the city.

Since he assumed office, Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's top priority has been improving the city's beleaguered education system.But five years into Mr. Schmoke's tenure, public confidence in NTC Baltimore's school system may be at a low point -- oddly, in part, because the mayor insists on playing a prominent role in shaping school policy.Mostly, mayoral interest in public education is a good thing. It brings money, awareness and private support -- all of which is true in Baltimore.But Mr. Schmoke's active role in public education in Baltimore has in several cases embarrassed the people charged with running the system, the school board and the superintendent.

Starving hereAll Americans have been touched by the pictures of the starving children in Somalia, and most agree with sending our troops to get food and medical supplies to those in need.On the other hand, our own country is suffering. Our cities are under siege by drugs and crime. Our own little children are being gunned down in front of their own homes. Our elderly don't have enough to live on. There are more and more hungry and homeless every day.Why, oh why, can't our politicians see our needs?

It is a scenario Baltimore is painfully familiar with: The superintendent of schools takes a controversial position that angers an influential constituency and puts the credibility of the school administration on the line. Then he is publicly overruled by the mayor.Once before, the issue was a private school curriculum parents wanted to implement at the Barclay School. The school superintendent was Richard Hunter, who was effectively toppled by the controversy.This time the superintendent is Walter G. Amprey.

Hundreds of parents filled the Coldstream Park Elementary auditorium last night to denounce a proposed citywide school rezoning plan.The sometimes raucous public forum was the third such meeting this week during which parents were briefed on the plan to close nine schools, change the boundaries of 57 others and return all schools to traditional elementary, middle and high school grade levels.Many of those who protested last night were angered by the proposed elimination of popular K-8 schools.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday that he opposes a district recommendation to eliminate Baltimore's seven combined elementary- middle schools, preferring to see more schools with that structure."