Lab School

L ike many of my Charles Village neighbors, I was caught off-guard when a news article detailed how the old A.D. Anderson property on 25th Street is being promoted for a Lowe's hardware complex. Could it be that national retailers are returning to Baltimore after years of trading miles away from city residents? The change might have happened when Target opened at Mondawmin last year. That's was a start. After all, it's been nearly 30 years since Sears closed its handy North Avenue store.

LUFKIN, Texas -- For battered mothers as well as needy fathers with custody of their children, the doors to the newly built duplexes at Buckner Family Place on the Angelina College campus here open not only to a new home but a new life.These single parents, desperately struggling against poverty's undertow, will receive books, tuition and fees for a college education, jobs for spending money, free rent and utilities, and day care for the children.The program cares for 20 families for two-year periods.

A private school in Eldersburg for children with learning difficulties is planning a $3.5 million new building that will nearly quadruple its space and double its capacity. Friendship School, which has met for the past six years in a shopping center, is planning a 20,000-square-foot building on 3.7 acres in the Eldersburg Business Center, on Progress Way near Route 32. The Carroll County Planning and Zoning Commission reviewed the concept plan for the school yesterday and made a few suggestions, including sidewalks and a canopy at the building's entrance, but took no action.

WHILE GREETING a staff member new to Baltimore, I inquired where he was living. Without the least drop of hesitancy, he replied, "Howard and Fayette," meaning he has moved into the new Centerpoint apartment tower around the corner from the Hippodrome. It's one thing when you observe the old city come back, get fresh investment and be reinterpreted. It's another when your co-workers and friends actually do the deed and move into the New Baltimore. I've long preached that Baltimoreans need to take constant refresher courses because the city changes so rapidly.

Special education department to hold parent-teacher session Partners for Success, a program of the Howard County public school system's special education department, will sponsor a workshop, "Together We're Better -Advocating for Your Child," from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Oct. 12 at Faulkner Ridge Staff Development Center, 10498 Marble Faun Court, Columbia. The workshop will offer strategies for creating a positive working relationship between parents and educators. Information:Carrie Brown, 410-313-7009.

Thanks to Bebe Verdery for her excellent recap of Thornton funding for education funding and the danger it is in ( "Proposed cuts would break a promise to Maryland's kids," Feb. 27). That plan makes Maryland a moral and pragmatic leader among states in its willingness to address generational, legally sanctioned inequities in the education and opportunities afforded to children depending upon their race, class and region. It is moral to accept the state's responsibility to redress the denial of adequate care to our children through the years, and it is pragmatic to move vigorously forward in the recognition that the fortunes of all of us are tied to the fortunes of those denied children.

Tiny Aleph Bet Jewish Day School does not have a library, art room or science lab. School officials affectionately refer to the fifth-graders' classroom trailer as the "learning cottage." But they know that the euphemism doesn't register well with parents scouting out the Annapolis private school. "As loving, as wonderful [as this school is], look who you are competing against," said Cheryl Krushat, a trustee. "People are attracted to modern facilities." As Anne Arundel County's sole Jewish school marks 18 years - a milestone number in the religion - the board of trustees has decided it's time to make Aleph Bet more modern.

I sat down today to write a New Year's column about the future, but I can't proceed without a brief backward glance. Maybe it's the fault of my new CD: Original Christmas Favorites, sung by Bing Crosby, Nat "King" Cole and a very youthful Frank Sinatra.Anyway, remember along with me when your mother put on hose and heels and white gloves to go shopping; when if you worked hard and saved your money, you could buy the home of your dreams and raise your family while only the man of the house went to work.

Jemicy teacher killed in New York accident An English teacher at Jemicy School in Towson died recently in a motorcycle accident in New York as he was heading to Vermont for vacation, his mother said. Gary Anthony "Tony" Smith, 29, of the first block of Griffin Court in Fells Point was traveling through an intersection about 11 a.m. Tuesday when a car making a left turn struck him, his mother, Nicole Gnezda, said that New York State Police told the family. Gnezda and her husband, John Snouffer of Worthington, Ohio, had planned to meet Smith and his sister, Katharine Smith of Seattle, over the weekend for a wedding in Massachusetts.