Open Enrollment

The siblings of Howard County students going to schools outside their districts would no longer automatically be allowed to enroll in those schools under a policy proposed by county school officials.The new regulations on school transfer would also mean that students transferred by administrators because of behavior or other problems would not get to choose their new schools, as is now allowed."I personally see it as a little more restrictive," Susan Poole, Howard County PTA president, said of the proposal.

Howard County residents spoke out last night about problems with school redistricting and open enrollment and their feelings that principals are not accountable to parents. About 30 people expressed opinions to three members of the Leadership Committee on School Equity, which has been meeting since October to look into issues relating to resources, programs, staffing, accountability and equity in Howard schools. The 24-member committee was formed by Superintendent Michael E. Hickey and County Executive James N. Robey because of concerns raised about inequities in older and newer schools.

When Jacqueline Paul looks at her 12-year-old son Jason, she sees a normal little boy who loves baseball and in-line skating. But ever since Jason has been in school, Paul says, his teachers have seen him as a tangle of little mysteries to solve, a special education pupil wrought with unknowns. "They're always trying to figure him out," Paul said. "There's never anyone with any experience who understands him." So when the special education team at Oakland Mills Middle School told Paul that they had a program for children like Jason and had worked together for 15 years with every one of the many afflictions Jason suffers, Paul and her husband, Rob, nearly wept.

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield charged yesterday that the state's insurance commissioner exceeded his authority when he turned down CareFirst's request for a 50 percent increase in premiums for its existing open-enrollment health policies. The state's largest insurer made its arguments at a hearing before the commissioner, Steven B. Larsen, as it appealed Larsen's denial of the rate boost. In support of its rate request, CareFirst said it lost about $2 million on 1,850 open-enrollment policies.

The board that oversees a new state health insurance program met for the first time yesterday - the day the law creating the program went into effect - and began reviewing the questions it will have to answer before it can start issuing policies in one year. The Maryland Health Insurance Program is designed to provide coverage for those who can't get conventional policies because of their medical histories. It will replace an old state program, currently covering about 7,000 Marylanders, which has been criticized for years as a windfall for insurers offering thin benefits at high prices.

Hoping to give Howard County a competitive edge in hiring good teachers, the school board voted yesterday to give new teachers certified to teach "critical needs" subjects a $1,000 bonus to work in the county.Board members made a unanimous decision to offer the one-time incentive to new hires in areas that have a shortage of teachers. Those subjects are special education, math, science, reading, physical and occupational therapy, technology education and English as a second language.Recipients would be required to teach at least one year in Howard County and complete new-teacher orientation.

Two months after receiving a 47-page report about inequities in the Howard County school system and how to make the schools better, the school board met with the document's authors last night to try to better understand it. The report, titled "No Child Left Behind," was researched and written by the Leadership Committee on School Equity, a 23-member group that studied county schools from November to March. Superintendent Michael E. Hickey and County Executive James N. Robey created the panel in October in response to perceived inequities in the school system.

State Insurance Commissioner Steven B. Larsen acted within his authority in 2001 when he blocked a 50 percent premium increase sought by CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield for its "open enrollment" policies, the state Court of Special Appeals ruled yesterday. Larsen said the ruling could be significant, even though the state is dropping the open enrollment program, because "CareFirst was trying to impose a very narrow construction on our ability to consider what we think is relevant information in the context of a rate filing."

Principal Stephen Gibson, Three years ago, a group of parents from the Columbia neighborhood of Clemens Crossing pooled their money to hire buses that would transport more than 100 kids from older, more diverse Wilde Lake Middle School to the newer Lime Kiln Middle in Fulton. That unusual decision sparked an angry response from many in Columbia who thought the parents were taking advantage of Howard County's open-enrollment policy to run away from the educational and social problems that came with diversity.

To folks like Chris Thorne, the decision that parents make about where to send their children to school in Howard County is as simple as elementary arithmetic. "They only have one shot at going through school," said Thorne, who lives in Columbia. "Just one. So sometimes you just have to do what you have to do." To folks like North Laurel's Lisa Kawata, Thorne and others like him embody a subtle, surreptitious form of classism creeping through the school system. To the Howard County school board, it has come down to this: Now that it is time to decide what to do with the popular but much-debated policy called open enrollment, whose standpoint is the more valid?