Panelists

Anne Arundel County school board members, confronted with a string of construction debacles, say they will meet with County Executive John G. Gary to discuss his offer to have the public works department take over the joheir own problems that cost taxpayers $7.5 million.Lisa Ritter, a county spokeswoman, said yesterday that the board's decision is "a step in the right direction" that would result in a "savings for taxpayers through consolidation."The board agreed to the meeting with Mr. Gary late Wednesday after meeting with the school construction staff to discuss the proposed $46.5 million building budget for next year.

LOS ANGELES -- At roughly 9 o'clock this morning, 12 men and women were to head to the courtroom of Judge Lance A. Ito. But instead of taking their customary spots in the two rows of blue seats that are the jury box, they will sit around a table in a room nearby and begin weighing the fate of O. J. Simpson.Estimates of how long they will take range from a few days to several weeks. But these predictions, like almost everything else about the panelists and their predilections, are what Mr. Simpson's chief lawyer, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., would call "rank speculation."

TRUE STORY: The other night, I was on a trio of panelists at a forum of mayoral candidates. Five wanna-be mayors showed up. No names will be mentioned here. It should be sufficient to note that the lone Democrat wore a dress and that three of the four Republicans were African-American.At 75 percent, this may have been the highest proportion of black candidates on any GOP slate since Reconstruction.Not-so-true story: We asked tough, incisive, blistering questions that left each candidate squirming and groping for words.

Dayton, Ohio. -- There are no typical Americans, but I recently spent four hours here with 19 nice people who are surely not untypical.The participants were divided into two focus groups. The key ''screens'' for recruiting the panels were: total family income from $25,000 to $75,000, suburban residence, registered voters, ideological and party balance, and an education level no higher than a bachelor's degree. (Pollster Fred Steeper, who organized the sessions, believes that panelists with advanced degrees tend to lecture, not converse.

A Republican member of the state election board continued his attack on Baltimore's election administrator yesterday, calling for her resignation for setting up a special polling place in 1992 without state approval.The board member, Daniel J. Earnshaw, said city election administrator Barbara E. Jackson created an opportunity for fraud in allowing voting machines at a senior citizen apartment building in West Baltimore."The whole city board should resign or be fired," Mr. Earnshaw said. "If Barbara Jackson has the nerve to show up for work on Friday, it would be unbelievable."

Howard County victims' rights advocates and social service administrators spent three hours yesterday watching a satellite-linked panel discussion by national leaders on ways to stem violence in America.And they came away frustrated because what they consider the most pervasive form of violence in the county wasn't addressed."I think they're afraid of looking at family violence," said Stephanie Sites, executive director of the Domestic Violence Center of Howard County. "If you're not safe in your home, you're not safe anywhere."

Gov. William Donald Schaefer yesterday named the remaining six members of a powerful commission that will oversee health care reform in Maryland, picking people who appear to have more health-care and insurance ties than the General Assembly envisioned.A new law requires that four of the seven members "be individuals who do not have any connection with the management or policy of a health care provider or payer."But the attorney general's office has advised the governor that the appointees meet the criteria.

Kathleen Turner may or may not win an Oscar for her performance in John Waters' "Serial Mom," but she certainly deserves one for her performance at a Thursday press conference on the set of the movie in Towson.Radiant, ebullient, blazing with charisma and wit, Turner dominated a panel of actors and executives, including Waters himself, and did such a good job of it and kept everybody so royally entertained, nobody seemed to mind.Dressed for the part of a conventional Everymom who just happens to kill people -- in a shapeless beige house dress and espadrilles -- she looked so suburban you wanted to invite her to a Tupperware party, that is if today weren't her car pool day. But Turner was so busy imitating the best parts of Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead and Elizabeth Taylor, and so forcefully being the life of the party -- any party, all parties -- that most in attendance were more likely to ask for an autograph.

When Cantrece Simmons received her summons she didn't start dreaming up excuses to duck jury duty. Determined to fulfill her civic obligation, she became a juror -- possibly the Baltimore area's first deaf juror.Ms. Simmons, 22, was a juror in a two-day murder trial last week in Baltimore Circuit Court. Richard T. Rombro, the presiding judge during the trial, said the Northwest Baltimore woman could have easily avoided sitting on the jury by saying she was deaf."So many people try to get out of jury duty," Judge Rombro said, "and here she chose the role.

I WAS assaulted on a television show once when I introduced data from a RAND Corporation study showing that 75 percent of black males earn a middle-class income. In fact, all of the panelists on that show -- 13 very prominent black professionals -- were so convinced that blacks are universally victimized that any good news, any statistical fact showing black men are not being exterminated, completely upset the agenda.But the real threat to black men is not extermination. It is the XTC psychological crippling caused by middle-class blacks, who incessantly drum into young black males the lie that they are becoming extinct.