Mangle

If every dog has its day, yesterday belonged to Houston, a 5-month-old stray who went home with a new family and mended leg.The black mutt underwent orthopedic surgery Tuesday -- a week after a Baltimore Zoo employee discovered him limping through Druid Hill Park. Houston spent Tuesday night in the Chesapeake Veterinary Referral Center, where a $1,000 procedure was performed at no cost to his new Severna Park family.Zoo workers often stumble on stray cats and dogs, but Houston, they say, was different.

EVERY DAY brings new evidence of the breakdown of Maryland's criminal justice system. Nothing short of a fundamental overhaul will do when the court system in the state's biggest city moves from one paralysis to another, the probation machinery is broken and criminals walk free even after committing heinous crimes. Two years ago in an editorial called "Getting Away with Murder," we urged top public officials to end this officially sanctioned miscarriage of justice. Our repeated appeals fell on deaf ears.

A Baltimore public works employee was dragged into a jammed asphalt-patching truck yesterday morning in Mill Hill, then became stuck for two hours as workers struggled to free his mangled body.Eric Williams, 27, was in critical condition last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after he tried to clear a chute that sucks in asphalt, then spits it out for patching potholes. He was on a crew working in the 2600 block of Dulaney St. as part of Operation Benedict, a three-day neighborhood cleanup by city agencies.

At least four Westminster High School students who say they left a party last month as soon as they realized alcohol was present have been reinstated in their extracurricular activities, after a successful appeal to the county school administration. But a number of other student appeals were denied, if the students had lingered at the party before making an attempt to leave, said Dorothy Mangle, the assistant superintendent who heard about 20 appeals and mailed decisions to students Friday afternoon.

A group of teen-agers, barred from extracurricular activities at Westminster High School as the result of a party, is asking a Carroll circuit judge to reinstate them while the legality of a school policy is tested.Circuit Judge Francis M. Arnold began hearing testimony yesterday in the lawsuit brought by 12 Westminster High School students. The hearing continues today.Arnold must first decide whether the lawsuit belongs in court or whether the students must appeal first to the county school board and the State Board of Education.

Children who participated in the county school system's 1997 summer learning camps for at-risk pre-school and elementary-level students have shown improvement this school year in a number of areas, including attendance, academic performance and behavior, according to an evaluation of the program.The camps, begun three years ago as part of the federal Goals 2000 education initiative, also appear to be a factor in narrowing the gap in state test scores between those schools serving the county's greatest numbers of disadvantaged children and other schools.

Two plays -- one a "demented episode of Seinfeld" and the second about three people playing phone tag -- will be brought to life today and tomorrow by the All County Summer Theater Program.Performances of "The Man Who Died and Went to Heaven" and "Please Hang Up" will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Liberty High School, at Bartholow Road and Route 32 in Eldersburg.Tickets are $3 for adults and $2 for students and children.John O'Brien's 1985 play "The Man Who Died and Went to Heaven" focuses on Bill, played by Liberty junior Ken Fisher, who dies and goes to Hotel Heaven.

Freedom District Elementary School is one of 15 high-performing schools that state officials say showed the most consistent gains in the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program scores released last week.But as successful as their students are on the tests, teachers at the school don't overemphasize MSPAP, said Patricia Reed, fifth-grade teacher and past chairwoman of the School Improvement Team there."We don't really look at MSPAP any more than anything else," Reed said. "It's a guide."

In pockets of the county -- especially southern Carroll -- class sizes are very often 30 students or larger, according to the annual class size report given to the school board at its regular meeting yesterday.It was no surprise to board member Ann M. Ballard, however, because she has been getting calls all year from fellow South Carroll High School parents. One mother said her daughter was advised to sign up for work release because no room was available for her in the classes she wanted, Ballard said.

Third-graders and their teachers emerged as the stars when Carroll school officials released test scores yesterday from the annual "report card" the state issues for each of Maryland's 24 school districts.In general, Carroll continues to be one of the highest-scoring counties in the annual Maryland School Performance Program Report.But since 1992, third-graders had scored only slightly above the state average for their grade level in the part of the report card measuring sophisticated skills in reading, math, social studies, science, writing and language usage.