Randallstown High School

When asked last month about the biggest challenges facing Randallstown High School, William Thomas cited a curriculum that he doesn't find sufficiently challenging and students who don't seem to care about their grades. He said nothing about school violence. Yesterday, Thomas was one of four Randallstown students shot outside the school after a charity basketball game. He was in critical condition last night at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, according to a spokeswoman. The Sun interviewed Thomas and several other students in his African-American history class last month about the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education to desegregate American schools.

IN rain-splattered Randallstown yesterday, they joined voices to trumpet a bright new day of art and culture, and bicycle paths and pedestrian bridges, and theaters and playing fields. That day will take a few years to arrive, but so what? In Randallstown, it can feel like years just crossing from one side of cluttered Liberty Road to the other. This northwest corridor of Baltimore County is a collage of green and leafy residential neighborhoods divided by a kind of Berlin Wall of gas stations and fast-food joints, bail bond operations and liquor stores, and traffic that coughs and wheezes and sputters at its center.

A team of architects, urban planners and landscapers from around the country will be touring Randallstown and talking to residents today in hopes that they can find a way to transform a community dominated by aging strip malls on traffic-snarled Liberty Road into a more vibrant, attractive place. The tour will begin the process that will culminate with the team's presentation of a revitalization plan Monday. The effort is Baltimore County's second attempt at employing an Urban Design Assistance Team to create a plan for reviving an aging suburban community.

On May 27, 2003, SHAWN O. GEORGE, of Randallstown High School; devoted son of Sharonda Ellerby; fond brother of Sharod and Princeton. Visitation at the Calvin B. Scruggs Funeral Home, 1412 E. Preston St, on Monday, June 2, from 1 to 8 PM. Family will receive friends on Tuesday at Memorial Baptist Church, Caroline & Preston Streets, from 10 to 10:30 A.M., at which time funeral service will begin. Interment King Memorial Park.

Derek Dixon learned algebra last school year by filling out worksheets. This year, he must figure out his chemistry homework by surfing the Internet. A 10th-grader at Randallstown High School, Dixon said his education is marked these days by a lack of textbooks for homework, teachers who can't quiet noisy classmates, classwork that is uninteresting and crowded hallways where fights are common. Dixon was among a group of students from Randallstown High School and Milford Mill Academy who sat down recently to discuss the factors that they believe conspire against their academic achievement.

A consultant studying population trends in Owings Mills, Randallstown and other areas of northwest Baltimore County will recommend the construction of at least one elementary school to avoid severe classroom crowding. In a study to be released at a school board meeting Monday, DeJong & Associates predicts that the region's elementary schools will be almost 1,200 pupils over capacity by 2010 and redistricting won't solve the problem. "We came to do a boundary recommendation and realized there is no boundary recommendation that can fix the problem, except in the short, short term," said Carolyn Staskiewicz, the consultant's project manager.

A 20-year-old Pikesville man was shot and killed yesterday after he and a stranger stared at each other at a downtown Baltimore intersection, police said. Marshall H. Contee, a former Randallstown High School football star, was driving his pickup truck about 12:10 a.m. when the shooting occurred, police said. Both vehicles were stopped at Baltimore and Charles streets when police say the other driver shot Contee once in the head. Contee's vehicle then accelerated and slammed into a McDonald's restaurant at Baltimore and Light streets.

Bacterial meningitis, a sometimes deadly brain infection, is on the increase this year across Maryland -- but health officials say they see no evidence of a rising epidemic. Since the beginning of the year, the state health department has recorded 13 cases of the disease, about twice the normal count. At this time last year, six cases had been recorded. "This year seems particularly bad compared to recent years," David Blythe, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said yesterday.

Parents kept an estimated 250 Randallstown Elementary School pupils home yesterday to protest a school renovation plan, an action that forced state Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick to step in and negotiate a last-minute compromise. The protest was timed to hit state and county educators at a critical time, the start of the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program tests, which are used to gauge learning and state funding. Grasmick, concerned about the disruption of the testing schedule and the parents' action, rushed to Randallstown to meet with members of the school's PTA. She promised to have state officials review a $6 million renovation plan to make sure it will meet pupils' needs.

For most, the grooming started years ago in recreation leagues on Baltimore County's west side where neighborhood coaches taught spindly legged boys how to play the seams and snap a pigskin.Years later, a handful of peewee players turned brawny young men, members of rival football teams at Randallstown High School and Milford Mill Academy, will meet tonight to decide bragging rights big enough to last them a lifetime.Both teams -- the Milford Millers and Randallstown Rams -- are drooling at a chance to become this year's Class 3A state champion.