Magnet Schools

The Baltimore County school system will receive a nearly $6.5 million, three-year federal grant to improve student achievement and increase educational options for children through magnet schools. Funded by the U.S. Education Department, the Magnet Schools Assistance program provides competitive grants to help local school systems create magnet schools operated under a court-ordered or federally approved voluntary desegregation plan. About 50 school districts nationwide will share more than $108 million in the program.

An effort championed by some local officials to establish magnet schools in Anne Arundel County for students with talents in the arts, math and science has fizzled because of a lack of funds. Superintendent Eric J. Smith directed his staff last week to abandon a planning process in the works since September. Smith said he failed to garner financial assistance from the cash-strapped county and state governments. And he recently learned that Anne Arundel was ineligible for a federal grant used to create magnet schools in other counties.

In Baltimore County County man charged with drunken driving after woman killed ROCKDALE - A Lutherville motorist was charged yesterday with driving while intoxicated after a Woodlawn woman was struck and killed by a car as she crossed Liberty Road late Sunday. The driver, Bryan Moore, 37, of the first block of Hazymorn Court, was being held yesterday on $25,000 bond, police said. Police said a 2002 Mercedes Benz struck Matilda Shiri Bayong, 52, of the 3500 block of Wild Cherry Road as she walked across Liberty Road at Liberty Place Road about 11:40 p.m. The vehicle stopped a block east of the accident, and the driver called 911, police said.

CHICAGO - Word that a federal judge could throw out the 22-year-old desegregation plan for Chicago's public schools as early as this spring has caught school officials and advocates off guard. U.S. District Judge Charles P. Kocoras has ordered the Chicago school district into court Feb. 27 to discuss the possibility of dismissing the integration plan that the Board of Education agreed to in 1980 to avoid a legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department. "I do not know why it is that we should not terminate this consent decree because it is so outdated," Kocoras said at a status hearing a week ago, a court transcript shows.

Old Mill and Annapolis high schools may become Anne Arundel County's first magnet schools, if school board members endorse the superintendent's plan to establish the International Baccalaureate program at those campuses. During a school board retreat yesterday, Superintendent Eric J. Smith told board members that the schools were logical choices to house the program of rigorous coursework because of their location and capacity to absorb more students. Old Mill, in Millersville, would serve students living in the northern parts of the county; Annapolis would serve those from the south.

Old Mill and Annapolis high schools may become Anne Arundel County's first magnet schools, if school board members endorse the superintendent's plan to establish the International Baccalaureate program at those campuses. During a school board retreat yesterday, Superintendent Eric J. Smith told board members that the schools were logical choices to house the program of rigorous coursework because of their location and capacity to absorb more students. Old Mill, in Millersville, would serve students living in the northern parts of the county; Annapolis would serve those from the south.

New Town High in Owings Mills will not be an exclusive magnet school, but instead will draw students from nearby communities, calming parents' fears that their children would be left out when Baltimore County opens the $35 million building in September. Parents and community leaders from Randallstown and other northwest county neighborhoods were worried that the new school would become a magnet that would take applicants from throughout the county, shutting out area children and failing to relieve crowding in nearby high schools.

Colleen Schenning knows she would like to be a pediatrician some day. When the 13-year-old enters River Hill High School in the fall, she probably will join the school's Technology Magnet Program and study biotechnology. To that end, Colleen is spending the first week of summer vacation hooking up a computer, baking a cake and researching a vacation she won't take. She is one of about 100 Howard County pupils spending this week at the Technology Magnet Program's summer camp. "I wanted to learn more about the program and to find the area that I wanted to study," Colleen said.

Five years after starting a major reform of the school system, Baltimore school officials are taking the first substantive steps to improve high schools in the fall, overhauling two schools and planning to open three new small ones. But the new programs so far affect a small portion of the 14,000 students at the city's neighborhood high schools, where 71 percent drop out between ninth and 12th grades and low academic standards persist. The most significant changes are taking place at Southern High School in southern Baltimore and Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in East Baltimore, projects that together are expected to cost at least $40 million in state and city funds.

Five years ago, Howard County school officials transformed their vocational education program into the glitzier technology magnet program, to parents' and educators' cheers. Now, parents and officials are beginning to debate the future of the program, concerned that it is taking up space in crowded or growing high schools, that it costs too much and that it might not be adequately serving the students who are enrolled in it. "I hear so much about the tech magnet," Superintendent John R. O'Rourke said.