School Buildings

Harford County Public Schools announced last Friday that it will implement a four-day work week schedule for an eight-week period – from mid-June to early August – to save money and to have its facilities open into the early evening for parents who need to meet with school personnel. As a result, all but a handful of school buildings and other facilities will be closed on Fridays this summer, and the school system's 12-month employees will work four 10-hour days from the week of June 17 to 21 through the week of Aug. 5 to 9. "This new cost-saving strategy will save the school system approximately $120,000 by closing buildings for one day each week during an eight-week period throughout the summer," Superintendent Dr. Robert M. Tomback said in a news release announcing the change.

A major reason many Maryland jurisdictions - especially Baltimore County and Baltimore City - confront a growing problem of aging, obsolete school buildings is an obscure bit of Internal Revenue Service bureaucracy called the "prior use rule. " It applies in a limited number of circumstances, one being projects to renovate certain old public school buildings. Since 1986, this rule has forced Baltimore and other localities into one of three unpalatable choices: grossly overpay for modernizing their oldest schools; build new, often much more expensive ones; or push the problem onto the back burner, guaranteeing any eventual solution will be even costlier.

THEY'RE starting to fix the county's aging school buildings, thanks to a big chunk of money from county Executive Janet S. Owens and a $20.5 million contribution from state lawmakers. But the celebration of this good fortune shouldn't last too long. There's still too much catching up to do. Ms. Owens and other county officials presented a united front in Annapolis this year. They stuck together before the General Assembly on a multitude of issues, sang the same tune for school construction money.

LAST YEAR, Mayor Martin O'Malley provided a city loan that helped Baltimore's school system cope with a $58 million deficit. Now he is looking to take over repairs and maintenance of nearly 200 school buildings, fulfilling an important need -- and putting himself out front as a friend of the schools. That is not likely to hurt him should he seek higher office, but the proof will be in how his efforts benefit students. Those students are attending schools that are among the most dilapidated in the state, and studies conducted in the last eight years have identified nearly $1 billion in needed repairs at 184 schools.

Baltimore Freedom Academy students marched along East Fayette Street and in front of City Hall late Thursday afternoon, chanting "Save our schools!" and hoisting placards with such messages as "No Justice, No Peace, No Air, No Heat. " They led a procession of the school's teachers, faculty and parents into the adjacent War Memorial Building, where the group of about 40 joined approximately 200 other residents demanding that elected officials come up with funding to fix the city's deteriorating schools.

The recent reports on suspected cheating on standardized tests at some Baltimore City schools included the statement that school officials worry they might "have hit a wall in educating children. " Some of those walls have been in place for a long time in Maryland public schools - and they are dilapidated and moldy. Baltimore City and Baltimore County have the oldest school buildings in the state, and fewer than half of their schools have decent climate control, either in the hot months or the cold months.

An ambitious plan to secure tens of millions of dollars in state funding to fix Baltimore's dilapidated school buildings is the top priority for city officials in the General Assembly session that begins next week. The city's delegates and state senators are also united in opposition to Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan to build a new juvenile jail in Baltimore. "The governor had planned on building a new juvenile jail. That kind of flies in the face of the philosophy for most of us," said Del. Curt Anderson, who chairs the city's House delegation.

General Assembly leaders have agreed on a financing plan to allow Baltimore to spend nearly $1 billion on a sweeping program to replace and repair dilapidated school buildings over the next seven years. House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas Mike V. Miller said Monday they fully support and will line up votes for the plan, which would use state lottery revenue and the expertise of the Maryland Stadium Authority to borrow enough to build 15 new city schools and renovate dozens more.

Baltimore: East side Inmate walks away from corrections site Authorities were searching last night for a 41-year-old inmate who walked away from the Metropolitan Transition Center in East Baltimore while working on a cleanup detail. Henry Bryant was picking up trash with other inmates yesterday afternoon outside the jail in the 900 block of Forrest Street. When an officer conducted a count at about 2:30 p.m., he realized that Bryant was missing, said George Gregory, a spokesman for the Maryland Division of Correction.

At least 20 elementary school students and three teachers tested negative for exposure to mercury after a thermometer filled with the liquid broke in a science classroom Friday, according to Baltimore fire officials. City hazardous-materials teams and school police went to Guilford Elementary School on York Road after a teacher reported the thermometer broken and evacuated about 45 students from the classroom, according to city school officials. Fire officials said in a news release that students may have been handling a mercury-filled thermometer that broke.