Neighborhood Schools

Thirty-eight years after Brown vs. Board of Education, equality and understanding between the races remain an elusive dream. Perhaps they always will. Perhaps the differences between people guarantee that a day of perfect harmony will never dawn. Getting along will never be easy. Overcoming prejudice will always demand vigilance.That is why Anne Arundel must be wary of a new proposal for neighborhood schools in the Annapolis area, a plan that would erase artificial attendance boundaries drawn to create racial balance.

Band teacher Charles Funn's voice thundered in a classroom at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, shouting the names of familiar Southern foods as a way to help the students to find their rhythm. You can feel both, he explained, in your soul. "Fried chicken, greens, hot sauce, potato salad," Funn instructed above the small assembly of squealing trumpets and booming bass drums that clumsily converged as students struggled to raise their instruments and legs at the same time. "Grease!"

Anne Arundel County's school board is scheduled to get an update today on the success of the 2-year-old Neighborhood Schools Project, which is aimed at enabling students with special needs to spend time in the schools closest to their homes."

The life I experience as a 30-year resident and homeowner in Northeast Baltimore is quite different from the picture painted recently in The Sun. I've worked in community development for 16 years and know the Northeast Baltimore neighborhoods well. I have seen them evolve from quasi-suburban outposts to sought-after places with distinct amenities and some of Baltimore's most interesting people. Yes, the neighborhoods of Ednor Gardens, Belair-Edison, Lauraville, and Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello share the problems of most urban neighborhoods, but these communities are popular homeownership destinations for young families and fertile ground for prosperous new businesses.

Annapolis-area parents overwhelmingly agreed last night with the Anne Arundel County school board's goal of sending children to neighborhood schools, but many said the proposed redistricting would not benefit them.More than 200 people packed Annapolis Middle School, where more than 50 parents testified at the last of four redistricting hearings held around the county. The board will vote on the proposals next month.One group brought 75 people to complain that, amid all the talk of neighborhood schools, no proposal had been put forth for their communities on the north shore of the South River.

Not long ago, "neighborhood schools" was a phrase used by white segregationists clinging to their Jim Crow ways.But increasingly, black parents who had once sought integrated schools, even if it meant busing, are demanding a return to neighborhood schools.In Annapolis and neighboring Prince George's County, some black parents have embraced proposals for their youngsters to attend schools closer to home, even though that means going back to de facto segregation.But in Odenton and Severn, two Anne Arundel communities, black and white parents have gone to the federal government to stop neighborhood school plans they say amount to segregation.

Groups representing teachers and disabled children and five individual families filed suit yesterday against the Baltimore County school system and the state Board of Education over the county's decision to move hundreds of disabled youngsters from special education centers to neighborhood schools.Filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, the suit charges the school system with "implementing a policy under which the individual needs of children with disabilities are being ignored." It also alleges that administrators practiced "coercion, intimidation and threats against parents and special education teachers" who sought to exercise their rights under federal laws governing the education of students with disabilities.

Woodbridge Elementary School will add a sixth grade next year, the Baltimore County school board decided last night, marking the first step in a broader push by parents to keep children in neighborhood schools through middle school.The action, which will keep about 60 sixth-graders a year at Woodbridge -- which now ends at grade five -- comes in response to a parent proposal to ease crowding at Southwest Academy and keep Woodbridge Valley children in their neighborhood through eighth grade.

If you have been saving pink receipts from Giant Food stores to helpschools acquire computers, now is the time to hand them over. All area schools have had a lot of success, but the more register tapes they collect, the more free computers they will receive. Don't forget that receipts from prescription purchases are acceptable, too.GiantFood will be using the pink register tapes until March 2. Please getany you have to the schools for processing as soon as possible. Any student will be glad to deliver them for you, or you can mail them.

ANXIOUS PARENTS want to know. They're moving to the Baltimore area, so they call the newspaper."Where are the best schools?" they ask.Or: "We're thinking about Baltimore County or Howard County. Which has the best schools?" They might be more specific: "What have you heard about Crofton Elementary?"Such questions once were discussed with callers openly and without guilt. But that was before education became so intertwined with economics and race. As reputable real estate agents and brokers know, giving real estate advice on the basis of school quality can be a form of steering, a violation of fair-housing laws.

Public schools in Baltimore and the city's suburbs could easily absorb the students being displaced by a wave of Catholic school closings, but parents and students might find their first choices out of reach. In Baltimore, some of the best-performing elementary schools in desirable neighborhoods are at capacity. Slots at popular high schools such as Polytechnic Institute and Digital Harbor High are filling up fast, which could leave students at the closing Cardinal Gibbons School frustrated.

Public schools in Baltimore and the city's suburbs could easily absorb the students being displaced by a wave of Catholic school closings, but parents and students might find their first choices out of reach. In Baltimore, some of the best-performing elementary schools in desirable neighborhoods are at capacity. Slots at popular high schools such as Polytechnic Institute and Digital Harbor High are filling up fast, which could leave students at the closing Cardinal Gibbons school frustrated.

Public schools in the Towson area have too many students. Schools in the Dundalk-Middle River area have too few. But the Baltimore County school system wouldn't consider resolving such imbalances by redrawing school boundary lines - that upsets too many communities. However, a recent state audit critical of the system's approach shows it's time for officials to rethink their response to overcrowded and underused schools. With declining enrollments, the county can't continue to build its way out of this problem.

Tucked behind busy West Baltimore intersections lies a tiny neighborhood where one home caught the public eye this spring. That's because the homeowner offered his broad, flat front yard as the Baltimore site of "Edible Estates," the project that challenges people to replace their front lawns with gardens of organic veggies, fruits and herbs. Clarence Ridgley's bountiful yard stands out on a street of tidy brick and clapboard houses. And although none of his neighbors in the Callaway-Garrison community followed his lead, though plenty are enjoying his homegrown bounty.

Some Baltimore County students are losing the option to transfer out of failing neighborhood schools - the result of the system's decision to stop giving its middle schools federal money aimed at concentrations of low-income students. By choosing to spend all its federal Title I funds in the county's elementary schools starting next month, the school system will no longer be obligated under the federal No Child Left Behind law to provide transfers to students in its six failing middle schools.

Seven candidates are vying for three open seats on the Howard County Board of Education, and the process begins with Tuesday's primary election. Citizens will be allowed to vote for up to three candidates in the nonpartisan election. The top six vote-getters will move on to the Nov. 4 general election. Current board members Ellen Flynn Giles and Janet Siddiqui are running for re-election. Ellicott City's Allen Dyer and University of Maryland student Di Zou, both of whom campaigned unsuccessfully in 2006, are running again.

Harford has agreed to be one of two school districts in the state to launch a pilot program next fall to integrate special education students into neighborhood schools.The other school district that will take part in the program, aimed at studying the best ways to educate disabled students, is Queen Anne's county.In Harford, special education students from two school areas will attend neighborhood schools under the pilot program approved by the county Board of Education Monday. A planning committee will choose one elementary and one middle school in Harford by January for the program.

Students: Kristen Biancaniello, 17, Denise Burch, 17, Heidi Cox, 15, Brian DeVilbiss, 16, Molly Hall, 17, Shannon Johnson, 17, Lisa Link, 17, Katie McAuley 17, and Heather Swartz, 17, all of Broadneck Senior High.About the students: They are peer tutors in a program at Broadneck known as the Neighborhood Schools Project under the direction of Broadneck's special education teacher Debi Kibalo and part-time teaching assistant Anne Davis.According to Ms. Kibalo, "The purpose of the Neighborhood Schools Project is to develop and evaluate a model for providing an appropriate education for students with moderate to severe disabilities in their neighborhood school."

As a 25-year-old fresh out of law school making her first run for public office, Stephanie C. Rawlings Blake never imagined that one day she would assume the city's second-highest office. "I wanted to be involved and wanted to be in public service," the three-term council member recalled last week. "I was looking to use skills I developed. I didn't say, `I want to be council president.'" But council president is exactly what the now 36-year-old daughter of one of the city's most respected political figures is poised to be. Rawlings Blake, who has served as vice president for the past seven years, is virtually assured of becoming president in a vote of her council colleagues when the legislative body meets tomorrow - part of the domino effect created last week when former Mayor Martin O'Malley was sworn in as governor, and former Council President Sheila Dixon took the mantle of mayor.

An arrest warrant has been issued for a man suspected in the stabbing of a Denny's restaurant manager this week, officials said yesterday. David Theodore Burton, 28, who has no fixed address, is wanted on charges that include attempted first-degree murder, armed robbery, and first-degree assault, county police said. About 9:30 a.m. Monday, Denny's manager Michaele Frederick, 51, of North East walked out of the establishment in the 8000 block of Belair Road in the Fullerton area to make a bank deposit when he was approached by an attacker, police said.