Lake High School

The Celebration of the Arts in Howard County wouldn't run as smoothly if it weren't for the students. The youths from Wilde Lake High School work behind the scenes, doing everything from decorating to ushering at the annual fund-raiser for the Howard County Arts Council's grants and outreach programs. The gala is being held from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Saturday at the 739-seat Jim Rouse Theatre for the Performing Arts, which is part of the school. Ken Danker, an arts council board member who works with the student volunteers, said the group receives a budget each year to design and decorate "Main Street," the main hallway leading to the theater.

On a windy day that turned likely home runs into long, fly-ball outs, Mount Hebron and Wilde Lake resorted to playing an old-school version of elegant, strategic baseball. Players on both sides worked the count for walks, stole bases and scored on suicide-squeeze bunts, including the most important play of the game in the seventh inning, as the Vikings' Joe Cipro bunted home Nick Hoffner to capture a 3-2 victory. "We've been working a lot on using everything in our repertoire to manufacture runs," said Mount Hebron coach Matt Forsyth.

An award-winning team at Wilde Lake High School is not involved in sports, the arts or academics. Team members are students who participate in schoolwide blood drives, earning top performance awards from the American Red Cross. Wilde Lake's student-run drive has racked up several awards. It is the only school in Howard County to sponsor three yearly drives, earning "The World Series Award." Last year, the school received "The RBI Award" for collecting 467 pints of blood. Faculty member Jerome J. Berkowitz won "The Iron Man" award for his longevity - 16 years - as coordinator.

The student: William Meyerson, 17. The school: Wilde Lake High School. Special achievement: William was one of five Wilde Lake seniors who was named a National Merit semifinalist. School activities: He participates on the Math team, the "It's Academic" team and the Lincoln-Douglas Debate team at school. He is also on the ice hockey team. College plans: William has centered his college focus on the University of California at Berkeley and plans to major in mathematics. At Wilde Lake, he studies math, German and chemistry.

ELISE RAY was about to take second place in the all-around at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships in St. Louis Saturday night. She was a sliver behind the defending champion, Kristen Maloney, and facing her weakest event, the vault. She was a few weeks past surgery removing bone chips from her knee. Before her second vault, the June graduate of Wilde Lake High School in Columbia went to the officials' table. They thought she was going to ask to go to the bathroom. No, she wanted to tell them she was changing to a more difficult vault, one she had never attempted in competition before.

Whether by fate or plan, Brenda Thomas has a habit of stepping into challenges.After nine years of teaching social studies at Wilde Lake Middle School, Thomas left in 1995 to become eighth-grade team leader at Elkridge Landing Middle School the year it opened. Two years later, she went to a severely overcrowded Clarksville Middle School as assistant principal.Then the call came asking her to take the helm of Wilde Lake Middle School this year, a racially and economically diverse school in the heart of Columbia that has struggled recently with test scores, a receding student population and bad word-of-mouth; a school where unhappy parents removed dozens of children this year to attend the new Lime Kiln Middle in Fulton.

Amiri Baraka -- revolutionary poet, outspoken teacher, controversial orator, award-winning dramatist, black cultural nationalist and legendary loose cannon -- brought his entire arsenal of language to Wilde Lake High School yesterday.The 63-year-old firebrand took to the darkened stage before the polite audience of 300 suburban teen-agers to read his work, answer questions and do the job expected of every good poet -- disturb the peace."All you young people, don't just throw your life away," Baraka said slowly into the hidden microphone as the audience bristled with nervous laughter.

ENGLISH TEACHER Cindy Drummond is "a wonderful person who truly enjoys teen-agers," according to Maryann West, ninth-grade team leader at Wilde Lake High School."

When some look at Columbia's Wilde Lake High School, they see a nurturing environment for creativity; others see a permissive atmosphere that has spawned discipline problems and low academic test scores.What you see probably determines how you feel about Principal Roger Plunkett, whose actions in his first year at Wilde Lake have divided the high school community. By all accounts the campus that once embodied Columbia's free-thinking tradition is the midst of a cultural shift -- changes that reflect those in the 31-year-old planned community.

The mother of a Wilde Lake High School freshman expelled for her participation in a fight that preceded a teacher's death last month picketed the school yesterday, protesting what she called an overly harsh sentence for a student with no history of violent behavior.Juanita Jackson, her daughter Nia and two of her sons stood yards away from the parking lot where the May 14 brawl involving students from Wilde Lake and Howard High took place. The family handed out copies of a one-page letter defending its position to students and parents leaving the school.