Manchester Elementary

Name: Bridget HarrisHonored by The Carroll County Sun for: Scoring three goals for the North Carroll girls lacrosse team to help it edge Glenelg, 8-7, March 22Age: 18Residence; hometown: HampsteadEducation: Senior atNorth Carroll High School in Hampstead; graduate of North Carroll Middle; graduate of Manchester ElementaryFamily: cf,geregMother: Patricia, works at Black & Decker in Hunt Valley; father: Wilson, works at Westminster Auto Parks; sister: Jessica,...

A third-grade teacher at Manchester Elementary was named the new president of the Carroll County teachers union yesterday afternoon, after a razor-thin election tally forced a vote recount. Barry Potts, a 27-year teaching veteran whose career has taken him from Eldersburg to Westminster and Manchester elementaries, was declared the winner yesterday by 12 votes. He will take office in July or August. "We had loose chads and dangling whatevers," said Cindy Wheeler, who is finishing her second consecutive two-year term as president of the Carroll County Education Association and was union president from 1991 to 1995.

With the opening of long-awaited new schools on the horizon, Carroll school officials this week will begin wrestling with the sometimes unpopular process of redistricting.Spring Garden Elementary is the first school on tap, and school officials will conduct community meetings at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Hampstead Elementary and at 7 p.m. Thursday at Manchester Elementary to discuss four redistricting options.The $5.4 million school, slated to open next September, will have a capacity to house 600 students.

Mmm, autumn. Maples are suddenly aflame in color. Fields mellow their greens into bronze. The scent of snow blows in from a season yet to come, and summer warmth is found inside a sweater.Autumn is splendid. Or fabulous, if you agree with folks at St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1373 Main St., Hampstead. On Saturday, they'll hold their Fabulous Fall Bazaar from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.Fabulous Fall means fabulous homemade soups, the perfect fare to fight the autumn chill. Drop in to try their soups: vegetable, ham with bean or chicken-corn.

Hampstead and Manchester elementary schools are joining in a program that allows teachers from one building to pair up with teachers in the other and coach each other on better ways to do their jobs.Principals of the two schools heard their teachers saying they wanted more opportunities for professional feedback in nonthreatening ways, in addition to the evaluation that administrators do.So Hampstead Principal Judy Walker and Manchester Principal Robert Bruce wrote a grant request to the county superintendent.

Kindergartners at Spring Garden and Manchester elementary schools released dozens of tiger-striped monarch butterflies last week. As the creatures fluttered over neighboring flower beds, their instinctive migration had begun.They'll travel south along the Appalachian Ridge and spend the winter in Mexico, said Spring Garden Elementary teacher Sylvia Griswold, and we might see them in the spring. Her students had watched the butterflies develop in their classroom. The release finished their study.

To ease crowding at Manchester and Hampstead elementaries, Carroll County school officials are proposing to shift nearly 200 fifth-graders next fall to portable classrooms at North Carroll Middle. The move - estimated to cost about $280,000 for additional teachers and staff - would bring "immediate relief" to the crowded elementary schools as well as provide flexibility for moving pupils around those buildings as construction of full-day kindergarten classrooms begins, according to a proposal presented at last week's school board meeting.

A group of parents whose children attend Manchester Elementary want the county Board of Education to postpone until next month a decision on a redistricting plan for North Carroll elementary schools."

Even with the County Commissioners' backing, a second Manchester elementary school is at least three to five years down the road, Carrollschool officials said.Because of various tasks involved in the planning and construction of a new school, including state approval ofdesign and building specifications, the project will take a few years, said Lester P. Surber, Carroll's supervisor of school facilities/planning.The County Commissioners, responding to concerns of the Manchester Town Council, last week approved the elementary school project, to be financed with or without state assistance, and urged the school board to move ahead with the project.

The schools may be smaller, the teachers' talents more diverse, the buildings more modern.But Keith Cachett, assistant director of education in Thameside, England, -- near that county's Manchester -- said he's found more similarities than differences between English and American schools.Cachett's position is similar to that of William Hyde, Carroll's assistant superintendent of administration."We've been finding differences, but there are a tremendous number of similarities," agreedVernon Smith, Carroll's director of school support services and one of Cachett's hosts for the week.