National School

School lunch program, cafeteria workers great The week of Oct. 15 is National School Lunch Week. This special week is set aside to recognize not only the school lunch program, but also the many cafeteria workers who provide nutritional meals to students every day that school is in session. What most people don't realize about the Carroll County Public School System's food services program is that it is self-supporting. Approximately 20 percent of the food services income comes from federal reimbursements.

A. Blaine Hawley, principal of Red Pump Elementary School in Bel Air, was recently elected to the board of directors of the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP). Gail Connelly, NAESP's executive director, announced the election results from the association's headquarters in Alexandria, Va. Hawley begins her three-year term as director of Zone 3 on July 1. She will represent principals in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.

Mary Klatko grew up in Pennsylvania eating nutritious foods, some fresh from the family garden and cooked from scratch. When she was named Howard County's director of food and nutrition services 26 years ago, she assumed everyone ate that way, and though she would discover the contrary, she still incorporated a healthful-eating approach into the school system's menus. So Klatko was ecstatic, though not surprised, to learn that Howard County received an A-plus from the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which issues its School Lunch Report Card detailing how well school districts nationwide meet federal guidelines for healthful school lunches at elementary schools.

Mary Klatko grew up in Pennsylvania eating nutritious foods, some fresh from the family garden and cooked from scratch. When she was named Howard County's director of food and nutrition services 26 years ago, she assumed everyone ate that way, and though she would discover the contrary, she still incorporated a healthful-eating approach into the school system's menus. So Klatko was ecstatic, though not surprised, to learn that Howard County received an A-plus from the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which issues its School Lunch Report Card detailing how well school districts nationwide meet federal guidelines for healthful school lunches at elementary schools.

Havre de Grace High School Principal Jon Andes didn't exactly say "I told you so."But you'd understand if he did.Last week he learned his school was one of eight schools in Maryland selected to compete for the prestigious national School Recognition Program."

School board to hold forum on student evaluation The Carroll County Board of Education is co-sponsoring a community forum, "What Counts," from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow at the Carroll County Career and Technology Center. Co-sponsors are the Maryland Association of Boards of Education and the National School Boards Association. The purpose of the forum is to explore with community leaders how the effectiveness and quality of public schools should be measured. One important measure is how well students perform on standardized tests.

The furor over allowing a controversial news and advertising program to be shown in city public schools should have been foreseen by the school board. Obviously there were pros and cons to the proposal. But while the basic decision was right, the way it was communicated to the public was exceedingly clumsy.The plan would allow the Knoxville, Tenn.-based Whittle Communications to beam two minutes of commercials and 10 minutes of educational programming a day into city classrooms. In return, schools participating in the program would receive $50,000 in free TV and video equipment.

Two years after school districts around the nation scrambled to adopt tough provisions to keep guns out of schools, fatal shootings of students and teachers are again on the rise, renewing concerns about crime and violence in schools.In the past month alone, a teen-ager was shot to death on a school bus in St. Louis on Thursday, a teacher in Los Angeles was critically wounded in the head by a stray bullet the week before, and a teacher and two students were shot and killed Feb. 3 in a junior-high classroom in Moses Lake, Wash.

Kevin Jones scarfed down a small mountain of lasagna as he sang the praises of the new Wilde Lake High School lunch program, which was honored last week for innovative cafeteria practices.The west Columbia school offers a "scramble" lunch program that allows students to serve themselves from separate food stations rather than one long serving line. Students and teachers alike praised the increased variety as well as the speed of delivery."I gotta tell ya, it's pretty good," said the senior around a mouthful of fries and soup.

Ron Maglov looked a little wary yesterday as he prepared to do something he hasn't done in about 25 years -- eat lunch in a school cafeteria.But after sampling the lunch of barbecue pork pattie sandwich and string beans at Kingsville Elementary School in northeastern Baltimore County, Mr. Maglov gave the meal a thumbs up.His son Steven, 7, was more enthusiastic. "I buy my lunch all the time," he said between mouthfuls. "I like everything. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't buy it."Parents across Maryland are becoming reacquainted with the cafeteria this week as schools invite them to join their child for a midday repast during National School Lunch Week, Oct. 15-19.

The Windy City is engulfed in a stormy teachers' strike that has gathered front-page national attention. But will it turn out to be just more hot air in the national debate over school reform? I'm afraid so, even though the issues at stake in Chicago are not irrelevant. First, it's noteworthy that the stumbling block is not teacher pay. That's a vital lesson: We must work harder to understand other factors that count more in the all-important recruitment and retention of good teachers.

Students and staff at Prince George's County Public Schools are celebrating National School Breakfast Week March 5 to 9 in partnership with Kellogg's cereal company, to increase nutrition awareness and help a local Feeding America food bank. For each school breakfast purchased by students during the week, Kellogg's will donate a bowl of cereal to a local food bank through its "Eat, Share, Prosper" program. According to school officials, Prince George's County public school serve an average of 170,000 breakfasts each week.

In the 1980s, many were captivated by the Baltimore Orioles and their future Hall of Fame shortstop Cal Ripken. Growing up in Essex and playing shortstop for Calvert Hall, Rich Bielski was one of them. Now the coach at Archbishop McCarthy High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. - and this year's USA Today National Baseball Coach of the Year - Bielski remembers a meeting with Ripken that helped shape his aproach to the game. "I made the state all-star team, and our game was played in old Memorial Stadium after an Oriole game," said Bielski, now 44. "It was 1984 and the Orioles had won the World Series in 1983, and Cal was MVP. It was a great time to be an Orioles fan, and he came into our dugout and asked who the shortstop was. "He sat down with me and we talked.

Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso debated national school officials Thursday about how to attract, retain and reward competent teachers, a discussion he deemed vital as teacher contract negotiations continue and state and federal programs place more emphasis on teacher performance. In a forum hosted by the ACLU of Maryland Education Reform Project, school leaders discussed a recently released study by the National Council on Teacher Quality, which showed that Baltimore's teachers should be paid more but have too long been afforded overly generous benefits and evaluations from principals.

ROCKVILLE -Seton Keough and St. Frances were the top two girls basketball teams in the Baltimore metro area this season, and in Saturday's inaugural ESPN RISE National High School Invitational, the Gators and Panthers showed they can also compete with some of the best programs in the nation. In the first game, No. 4 seed St. Frances led No. 1 seed Riverdale Baptist for more than three quarters before the Crusaders made a late run and escaped with a 57-51 victory at Georgetown Prep's Hanley Center.

Can't get enough education news? Check out The Sun's newly launched education blog, Classroom Connections. The blog features contributions from all nine of the paper's education reporters. From local school issues to national higher education, the blog will give you a better look at the inner workings of the education world. The blog is also a chance for the public to interact with the paper's education team. The team will field questions, raise issues for discussion and update you with the latest trends and reports from school systems, think tanks and advocacy groups.

A program that grew up with the Baby Boomers -- the National School Lunch Program -- turned 50 this year, and it's getting a face-lift.As of July 1, federal rules require that school lunches conform to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's dietary guidelines. That means school meals will be based on the new food pyramid, with its emphasis on grains and legumes and fruits and vegetables, and de-emphasis on dairy products and meat."It's the biggest change in the national school lunch and breakfast program since it began," said Linda Miller, who oversees nutrition programs for the Maryland State Department of Education.

THE NATIONAL Assessment of Educational Progress - "The Nation's Report Card" - recently took the pulse of nine of the nation's big urban school districts. And found it stronger than many expect. For years, big-city districts such as Baltimore have been assumed to be hopeless wastelands where students are far behind their peers nationally. Not so, according to the NAEP study. Students in several of the cities in the study scored above the national average in standardized tests given last year.

The next time you're in a hurry and think you can get by a school bus making its umpteenth stop, think about this: The fine for passing a stopped school bus with its red lights flashing is $570 and three points on your driving record. And you will most likely be cited because school bus drivers note license plate numbers, car descriptions, time, date and location of violations, and report them to the police and to the Carroll County Public Schools' Transportation Department. "I have up to a year to issue a violation," said Sheriff's Deputy 1st Class Conrad Dill, who has already issued 50 citations this school year on almost daily bus patrols.

STERLING, Va. -- About 55 million youngsters are enrolling for classes in the nation's schools this fall, making this the largest group of students in America's history and, in ethnic terms, the most dazzlingly diverse since waves of European immigrants washed through the public schools a century ago. Millions of baby boomers and foreign-born parents are enrolling their children, sending a demographic bulge through the schools that is driving a surge...