Park Middle School

A public forum on the Brooklyn Park Small Area Plan is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Brooklyn Park Middle School. Brooklyn Park is one of 16 areas of the county designated for a Small Area Plan, which is designed to guide land use and zoning and other community design elements. Information: 410-222-7432.

City police chasing a suspected car thief on foot forced a lock-down at Roland Park Elementary/Middle School in the city's northwest neighborhood for less than an hour Monday morning. The city dispatch notified area schools of the incident, which began about 8:10 a.m. Police chased the suspect, who abandoned the stolen car and ran across a field at the school in the 5200 hundred block of Roland Avenue. Staff heard police calling "Stop" and saw the suspect continue running, officials said.

Live performance -- Darcie Hildebrand, Katherine Gowland and Emily Crowley will appear in Severna Park Middle School's production of Schoolhouse Rock Live! Performances are scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $5 in advance for children in eighth grade and younger, and $8 in advance for ninth-graders and older; the cost at the door is $7 and $10, respectively. Order forms are available at www.spms-sls.org.

Go purple, or go to the library. That was the warning some teachers issued to parents at Roland Park Elementary/Middle School regarding student participation at Friday's Ravens-sponsored pep rally in advance of the team's conference championship game Sunday against the New England Patriots. "Students must wear purple or Ravens attire to attend, as there will be many TV cameras there," one teacher wrote to parents in an email obtained by The Baltimore Sun. "Not wearing purple or Ravens attire means making a choice not to attend.

A graphic in Friday's Anne Arundel section may have left a misleading impression about when Brooklyn Park Middle School failed to meet the state's annual benchmarks for student progress. Special education students didn't meet reading benchmarks in the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 school years. Though those students reached those goals in 2004-2005, black students fell short that year. The school made adequate progress in all areas last year, before falling behind again in two categories this year.

Brooklyn Park principal named education leader Brenda Hurbanis, principal of Brooklyn Park Middle School, has been named the distinguished education leader for Anne Arundel County Public Schools for this year. The middle-school staff nominated Hurbanis for the award, which is sponsored by the Washington Post. "Hurbanis epitomizes the words `instructional visionary.' The commitment to the mission, vision and values of the school is always evident in her action and words," said her staff in the nomination.

Harlem Park Middle School in West Baltimore was ransacked over the weekend, forcing the school to stay closed yesterday. It is expected to reopen today. Someone entered the school between Saturday and yesterday morning and ransacked 21 classrooms and administrative offices. The vandals broke windows in doors to gain access to locked classrooms, leaving shattered glass on the floor, a school spokeswoman said. School officials discovered the vandalism at 6 a.m. yesterday and decided to close the school for the day to investigate the break-in as well as clean and make repairs.

THE 10TH ANNUAL Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Chess Tournament starts at 9 a.m. Jan. 18 in the cafeteria at North County High School, 10 E. First Ave.All Anne Arundel County high school chess players are invited. The entry fee is $9. Rules used in statewide competition will be followed. Trophies will be awarded to the top four winners.For more information, call Frank Utley at 222-6970.Country line dancingDo you like country music and dancing? Country line dance lessons are offered from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays, starting tomorrow, at Brooklyn Heights United Methodist Church, 110 Townsend Ave.The cost is $4 each night for six weeks.

Construction of new sidewalks, road resurfacing and landscaping along Church Street in Brooklyn Park will begin this week as part of a $1.3 million improvements project. The work will extend from Ritchie Highway to the city line. In announcing the start of the project, state Sen. Philip C. Jimeno and Del. Joan M. Cadden, both District 31 Democrats, said the work is part of the state's Smart Growth initiative, which allocates funding to older, established communities for revitalization.

Four Severna Park youths and one from Millersville spent the Presidents Day holiday weekend in juvenile detention centers after they were arrested Friday on bomb-threat charges.TTC Hearings on the charges, which stem from threats at Severna Park High School and Severna Park Middle School, are scheduled for today.The first three were arrested after an administrator at Severna Park High found a note about 9 a.m. in a school stairwell threatening a bomb. Soon afterward, several students told the administrator they had overheard three students talking about a bomb-threat note, police said.

When state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick called on Maryland students to pitch in after the devastating earthquake in Haiti this year, they responded. But none quite like the seventh-graders at Severna Park Middle School. The Anne Arundel students were celebrated Thursday afternoon for raising $12,000 for relief efforts in Haiti — the most of any school in Maryland — in the statewide Maryland Kids Care Campaign, Operation Haiti: Collecting Pennies (and More)

Alfred Dale Proffitt, a retired city educator who had been vice principal of Roland Park Middle School and whose career spanned more than three decades, died of pulmonary failure Saturday at York Hospital in York, Pa. The former longtime Northeast Baltimore resident was 76. Mr. Proffitt, the son of a Southern Railway carpenter, was born in Monroe, Va., the youngest of five brothers and a sister. "His father named him for Alf Landon but his mother didn't like that name and added the Dale," said his wife of 54 years, the former Theresa M. Wozniak, a retired educator.

A graphic in Friday's Anne Arundel section may have left a misleading impression about when Brooklyn Park Middle School failed to meet the state's annual benchmarks for student progress. Special education students didn't meet reading benchmarks in the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 school years. Though those students reached those goals in 2004-2005, black students fell short that year. The school made adequate progress in all areas last year, before falling behind again in two categories this year.

Live performance -- Darcie Hildebrand, Katherine Gowland and Emily Crowley will appear in Severna Park Middle School's production of Schoolhouse Rock Live! Performances are scheduled for 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $5 in advance for children in eighth grade and younger, and $8 in advance for ninth-graders and older; the cost at the door is $7 and $10, respectively. Order forms are available at www.spms-sls.org.

Harlem Park Middle School in West Baltimore was ransacked over the weekend, forcing the school to stay closed yesterday. It is expected to reopen today. Someone entered the school between Saturday and yesterday morning and ransacked 21 classrooms and administrative offices. The vandals broke windows in doors to gain access to locked classrooms, leaving shattered glass on the floor, a school spokeswoman said. School officials discovered the vandalism at 6 a.m. yesterday and decided to close the school for the day to investigate the break-in as well as clean and make repairs.

Brooklyn Park principal named education leader Brenda Hurbanis, principal of Brooklyn Park Middle School, has been named the distinguished education leader for Anne Arundel County Public Schools for this year. The middle-school staff nominated Hurbanis for the award, which is sponsored by the Washington Post. "Hurbanis epitomizes the words `instructional visionary.' The commitment to the mission, vision and values of the school is always evident in her action and words," said her staff in the nomination.

Nathaniel Madison, a Baltimore father of four, won't tolerate criticism of the city's nine-school experiment in privatizing education."I think it's amazing really," said Mr. Madison, whose 4-year-old .. preschooler is learning to read on a computer at Malcolm X Elementary, one of the nine so-called "Tesseract" schools. "It's all new and exciting, just like being on a rocket ship."Mr. Madison was among the 375 parents who turned out at Harlem Park Middle School yesterday for a half-day school system conference bringing them together with educators in the program.

What could be more beautiful than Central County in the spring? Possibly Paris.A group of Severna Park Middle School students is participating in an exchange program that will allow them to experience the dream trip of a lifetime: Paris in the spring.On May 21, 19 seventh- and eighth-graders from the middle school will begin a three-week visit to Buc, France. Twenty-five students from Buc (a suburb of Paris) have just returned to France after a three-week stay in Severna Park.With chaperons Sarita Tate, a foreign language teacher, and Nick Silvestri, the school psychologist, the students will tour France with their host families, visiting the Palace of Versailles and spending several days in Paris.

IS BROOKLYN Park destined to become the educational hub of Anne Arundel County? First a new middle school opened. Next came the Chesapeake Arts Center and its offerings in art, drama, technical theater and just about everything else involving the arts. Then North County Recreation Center began holding classes in crafts and physical fitness. Last but not least, North County Senior Center has offered classes on subjects ranging from computer science to organic gardening. Anne Arundel Community College is the latest educational institution to cross over the Beltway.

A public forum on the Brooklyn Park Small Area Plan is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Brooklyn Park Middle School. Brooklyn Park is one of 16 areas of the county designated for a Small Area Plan, which is designed to guide land use and zoning and other community design elements. Information: 410-222-7432.