Northern High School

Helena Nobles-Jones, an assistant superintendent in Washington, has agreed to become principal of Northern High School, one of Baltimore's most troubled schools.Baltimore schools chief executive Robert Booker said yesterday that the system was extremely lucky to have attracted Nobles-Jones. "She came across as a powerful, dedicated leader" and impressed parents and teachers at Northern, he said.Nobles-Jones takes over from a controversial principal, Alice Morgan Brown, who retired last month after a year of turmoil during which she became the subject of news reports and talk shows across the country for her suspension of 1,200 students one afternoon in November.

Comedy show -- The fourth annual Chesapeake Comedy Night will be held at 7 p.m. tomorrow in the Mary Harrison Center at Northern High School, 2950 Cheneyville Road, Owings. Comedian Phil Di Thommaso and comedy illusionist Dana Daniels (above) will perform. Chesapeake Church will host this family-friendly show. Tickets cost $15. 410-257-0700 or www.chesapeakechurch.org.

Issuing what she called a "cry for help" in the fight to gain control of her rowdy school, Northern High School Principal Alice Morgan-Brown yesterday handed out conditional suspensions to nearly 1,200 of her 1,800 students and requested conferences with each of their parents.Brown's actions -- which school officials describe as the most sweeping disciplinary action in district history -- came after two days in the past week in which nearly two-thirds of the children in her school openly defied her instructions.

Nearly everyone agreed that a drastic change was needed at Northern High School, a place that recently had come to symbolize all that was wrong with the city's neighborhood high schools. The school, which had been through four principals in five years, had gang-related violence and nearly as many dropouts as graduates. The teaching staff felt powerless. So last summer administrators decided to do something just short of shutting the doors. They created four schools by dividing the building into two facilities and creating two additional small high schools in different locations.

An argument between two groups of youths spilled out of Baltimore's Northern High School yesterday morning and escalated into a violent brawl, severely injuring a freshman. By the time city and school police arrived, 15-year-old Willis Reese was lying on pavement about 100 yards from the school's entrance, suffering from a fractured skull. Reese, who lives in the 5300 block of Midwood Ave., was listed in critical condition last night at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The fight broke out about 9 a.m. yesterday as classes were beginning, police spokesman Kevin Enright said.

More than 1,000 Northern High School students, several dressed in black T-shirts, marched solemnly onto the school football field yesterday to pay tribute to two recently slain schoolmates -- one a gifted math and science graduate, the other a football hero.With trembling voices and tears in their eyes, several students shared stories about Maishan St. Patrick Nelson and Rocco C. Cash, whose lives were cut short in separate shootings."We will forever remember these two students," said student Jermal Taylor.

THE KEY TO a successful school is the quality of its leadership. You can read that in an education school textbook or go to Baltimore's Northern High School for a textbook example.Here are condensed notes from the past three opening days at Northern:Sept. 3, 1997. Chaos. Students wander in littered hallways. Dozens without class schedules. Outside, two punks on motorcycles ride up and down Pinewood Avenue. Administrative staff seems in a fog.Aug. 31, 1998. Semichaos. New principal, Helena Nobles-Jones, in office for a month.

Northern High School teacher Mary Robinson sits at home every day, afraid to return to her typing class. A 16-year-old student who routinely disrupted her lessons, cursed her out and even threatened to "drop her" is still in class -- despite a police report, a union grievance and a six-page school discipline report that documented his unruly actions.Robinson doesn't need to know that 1,200 students got suspended from Northern this week to understand just how out of control the troubled northeast Baltimore school has become.

Comedy show -- The fourth annual Chesapeake Comedy Night will be held at 7 p.m. tomorrow in the Mary Harrison Center at Northern High School, 2950 Cheneyville Road, Owings. Comedian Phil Di Thommaso and comedy illusionist Dana Daniels (above) will perform. Chesapeake Church will host this family-friendly show. Tickets cost $15. 410-257-0700 or www.chesapeakechurch.org.

Everyone approves President Bush as the nation's crisis leader avoiding divisiveness. How long this lasts is his call. The U.S. attorney is there to investigate Democratic office-holders, not to be distracted by crime, dope and guns. Networks want the terrorist's trial to be as good television as the destruction of the World Trade Center was. Firing the principal of Northern High School has been tried. It doesn't help.

With available funds shrinking as demand for new school classrooms rises, Howard County's school board plans to take a more aggressive stance in setting next year's school construction priorities, Chairman Sandra H. French said yesterday after a meeting between the board and the County Council. "We're going to change the process," she said, with the board discussing building priorities in late August - a month before Superintendent John R. O'Rourke and his staff present their plan in public.

A spike in burglaries in Northeast Baltimore and truancy records of some Northern High School students led to the arrest of five students this week, police officials said yesterday. The five Northern students are accused in five of 26 burglaries of houses near the school, Col. Robert M. Stanton, chief of detectives, said at a news conference at police headquarters. Police would not identify the juveniles by age or say what grades they are in. School system spokeswoman Edie House referred questions to police.

Slots aren't the way to raise the revenues ailing schools need Michael Olesker's eloquent column about the need for slots at Maryland racetracks impresses us with the facts that other states are taking our gambling dollars and that the money is needed badly by our school system ("Bid for slots at racetracks faces long political odds," Jan. 6). But he fails to mention where these magical new dollars will come from. Most will not be from trendy yuppies trying to enrich their dull lives.

Everyone approves President Bush as the nation's crisis leader avoiding divisiveness. How long this lasts is his call. The U.S. attorney is there to investigate Democratic office-holders, not to be distracted by crime, dope and guns. Networks want the terrorist's trial to be as good television as the destruction of the World Trade Center was. Firing the principal of Northern High School has been tried. It doesn't help.

Baltimore school officials promised a "wonderful renaissance" for Northern High School last night, even as some parents and teachers expressed continued concerns over safety in and around the building. At a town meeting in Northern's library, school system administrators pledged "laser attention" in reforming the Northeast Baltimore school, where a 15-year-old student suffered a near-fatal beating four weeks ago after getting off an MTA bus. The system's chief academic officer, Cassandra W. Jones, said the recent violence has prompted the school system to speed up its plans for overhauling Northern, which was slated to be reformed with the city's eight other neighborhood high schools.

Baltimore police cars cruised the streets around Northern High School yesterday morning, while teachers and administrators tried to calm a campus troubled by violence. A 15-year-old student, Willis Reese, was beaten just outside the school Friday and remained in critical condition at Johns Hopkins Hospital yesterday. Two Northern students have been arrested and charged with attempted murder. Schools chief Carmen V. Russo said officials are trying "a group of strategies to calm things down."

HOW DO YOU prevent tragedies such as the one that stunned Jonesboro, Ark., when two boys in fatigues ambushed their middle-school classmates and killed four girls and a teacher?Open your eyes.After the shooting in the northeast Arkansas college town, a teacher described one suspect as a " 'yes sir, no sir' kind of kid." Another staffer said the youths' worst prior offenses were "talking too much." Another assured that they were not "troublemakers."Classmates, however, painted a different picture.

ARE WE ALL living in the same world?In the world of Northern High School, where a terrified teen-age boy was fatally shot last week, a world where the principal suspended 1,200 kids in one overwrought day, a world where hundreds of parents and children gathered Tuesday night to talk about their troubled school, we had Marietta English, head of the Baltimore Teachers Union, hollering into a bullhorn - about labor negotiations.Are we all living in the same world?In the world of the Baltimore public schools, a world revealed this week to have reached academic depths beyond our worst suspicions, a world where 91 percent of all eighth-graders flunked a national math test, a world where about two out of every three high school kids disappear before graduation, a world where the average SAT score is 832 out of a possible 1,600, we had Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke standing on Northern's auditorium stage Tuesday night - talking about "potential" in the schools, exactly 10 years after he took office promising to make schools the centerpiece of his administration.