Ready For School

Miss Maryland, you did us proud. Sunday night in Las Vegas, 27-year-old Nana Meriwether, from Potomac, finished as the runner-up in the 2012 Miss USA pageant. The title went to Miss Rhode Island, 20-year-old Olivia Culpo. Clearly, Meriwether didn't lose because her resume was lacking. It's impressive enough that she graduated from Washington's prestigious Sidwell Friends School (where the alumni list includes the children of presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Nixon and Clinton, and where the Obama girls are currently enrolled)

THE END of summer is near.Moms are the first to notice the subtle change. You can see relief in their eyes as they ease their kids through the store toward the stacks of Hunchback folders and Genie backpacks.Little furrowed brows have begun to replace the summer smiles on the faces of veteran students. They know how soon the thrill of new clothes fades, how quickly long evenings outdoors become a time for homework.Speaking of homework, maybe you'd like to get away from yours and try teaching a class at the YWCA of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County.

IT MAY still be summer, but Lauren McAlee has begun what might be the most important project of her senior year in high school: a term as student member of the state school board. McAlee, whose term on the Maryland State Board of Education began last week, is busy researching issues, and has attended an orientation for new members and a retreat with others on the board. The South River High School student is looking ahead to her first board meeting, July 23. McAlee has been active in student government since her freshman year.

With Carroll County planning a rare public school day on Good Friday to make up for snow days, administrators are bracing for least 15 percent absenteeism tomorrow among teachers - and perhaps even more absences by students. More than 300 of the school district's 1,950 teachers had given notice by Tuesday afternoon - the most recent statistics available - that they plan to take the revoked spring vacation day as a personal day. "The surprise is not the number of teachers taking off," said Stephen Guthrie, the school system's assistant superintendent of administration.

Geoffrey Close, the Harford County school board's newest member, isn't going to have much time for a honeymoon with fellow board members. He'll be facing some weighty issues at his first board meeting tomorrow night.The agenda includes an update on the preliminary objectives for the 1995-1996 operating budget and a discussion of the results of the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP), the state's annual report card for schools.But Mr. Close is prepared. As a former mayor of Bel Air, he's used to budgets, he said.

After months of observing, listening and preparing, Liberty High School rising senior Rachel Van Parys has left the audience and joined the actors, ready to take on her new role. Van Parys is the new student member of the Carroll County Board of Education, a position she will hold for a year. For the first time this month, she slipped into the seat recently vacated by Maggie McEvoy, a Century High student who just graduated. "It's really exciting, and it will definitely be hard to follow Maggie and Brendan [Schlauch]

Robert H. Merriman says the only way his 14-year-old son will succeed in Howard County schools is if they flunk him.In an unusual move, Merriman has filed a lawsuit against the Howard County school board demanding that his son be allowed to repeat eighth grade. For now, the boy is going to school in the family's basement office.Merriman alleges that his son, Robert H. Merriman IV, is not ready academically for high school, pointing to the boy's continuing difficulties with basic math. He wants his son, who has a learning disability, to have a decent high school record when he starts applying to colleges, which look at academic performance beginning with the ninth grade.

Howard County school officials are proposing tougher standards that could require eighth-graders to repeat the year if they fail certain basic tests, a step no other Maryland school system has taken.The policy would require educators to automatically consider holding back eighth-graders who fail the Maryland Functional Tests in writing, reading or mathematics. It would also require that eighth-graders who fail any of these tests attend summer school.About 400 Howard County students now in ninth grade failed to pass one or more of the tests by the end of middle school, said Gene Streagle, director of high schools for the county.

Pre-first: watered-down first grade or souped-up kindergarten?A gift of time or a theft of opportunity?A gentle boost for students not quite ready for school or an elitist strategy by parents trying to ensure that their children are at the top of their class?Wedged between kindergarten and first grade, pre-first can be all of the above, depending on one's perspective.In the Baltimore area, pre-first was a private-school creation, adopted by some schools more than 20 years ago to address the needs of youngsters with birthdays late in the year or with developmental clocks running slightly behind their chronological age.More recently, the idea of delaying the start of school for some youngsters has gained currency among public school parents, some of whom postpone the start of kindergarten by a year or send their children to kindergarten for two years.

While Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso deserves thanks for six game-changing years in Baltimore, the transformation he presided over owes as much to the vision and resolve of a city school board that insisted on fostering choice and accountability while also investing more in the schools. The board must now stay the course on institutional reform and move forward with an even sharper focus on academic achievement. First, it should maintain a strict focus on the core principles of our turnaround: school choice and the "fair student funding" that undergirds this market-oriented approach to opening and closing schools.