School Construction

Baltimore County wanted lights and turf for athletic fields, skate ramps and new schools. And for the most part, the county got it. Some of the priorities of local officials -- such as halting construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal -- didn't win approval from lawmakers, who adjourned their session earlier this week. But at a meeting yesterday of the legislators, attended by Gov. Martin O'Malley, county officials celebrated their victories in Annapolis, including the record $52.25 million for public school construction and renovations.

Patronage passing as aid for college? After reading The Sun's article "College grants under attack" (April 4), it occurred to us that this issue has been debated for several decades. Yet no one seems to discuss the fact that the legislative scholarships are an unnecessary duplication of other state programs. The Maryland Higher Education Commission has overseen the administration of the Guaranteed Access Grant and the Educational Assistance Grant for many years. These programs provide help to needy students who want and deserve to attend colleges in Maryland.

There was consensus among County Council members last week that Harford's rural landscape is threatened, that its schools are crowded and that current policies have failed. How that would translate into votes on a bill tightening the link between elementary school capacity and new development, however, was tough to predict. The bill revised the county's adequate public facilities ordinance, bringing the county's criteria for determining school capacity in line with the state standard.

Howard County officials are hoping for a larger share of state school construction money after a warm welcome by Maryland's new governor at his first Board of Public Works meeting. "One of the strongest, greatest counties in all of Maryland!" Gov. Martin O'Malley exclaimed as County Executive Ken Ulman, all 11 county legislators, four County Council members, plus a squad of school board and staff members approached the microphone for their turn at the annual session dubbed the "beg-a-thon" by cynics.

The Harford County Council unanimously enacted and the county executive quickly signed a nearly billion-dollar budget last night that includes pay raises for teachers and sheriff's deputies, funding for several key capital projects and $23 million in local money for school construction - all without increasing the property tax. Although $100 million proposed for a new administration building in Bel Air and an expanded waste-to-energy plant in Joppa were...

With little debate, the Anne Arundel school board approved Superintendent Carol S. Parham's $55 million construction budget yesterday, the first step in her plans addressing redistricting and crowding for the next two decades.The board unanimously approved the capital spending proposal and voted to move construction of a new Seven Oaks Elementary School higher on the list of priorities.It also set aside about $900,000 so that planning for the school can begin in 2001 instead of 2006. Seven Oaks would be completed in 2004 instead of 2009.

Funding for the long-awaited Century High School in South Carroll will be rejected if the school board doesn't agree to increase its capacity from 1,200 to 1,600 students, two county commissioners said Friday.Playing hardball against the school board is necessary, Commissioner Robin Bartlett Frazier said, because she fears the costs of defending lawsuits against the Board of Education over botched projects, including Cranberry Station Elementary and Francis Scott Key High, could hamper future projects.

PARRIS N. GLENDENING, who said he wanted to be the "education governor," can at least lay claim to being the "education infrastructure governor."In awarding $257 million for school construction in the coming year, Mr. Glendening is funding projects at a level that affirms his own description: "Golden age for school construction."He provided $634 million for school construction in his first term, almost twice the total of the prior four years. Benefiting from economic good times, he is on pace to provide $1 billion to build and renovate schools through his second term.

OCEAN CITY -- Gov. Parris N. Glendening unveiled plans yesterday to rewrite the rules on education aid to promote the renovation of older schools in established neighborhoods, rather than new construction in sprawling outer suburbs.The change in the state's formula for awarding school construction money would bring millions of dollars in extra assistance to jurisdictions with large numbers of older buildings.Glendening's announcement came in a speech here to the Maryland Association of Counties in which he outlined aggressive plans to further his agenda of education, gun control, Smart Growth and opposition to smoking.

In a precedent-setting move, Baltimore County plans to hire a program management company to oversee two years of school construction and renovation work -- projects worth about $230 million in state and county funds.The projects are part of a $530 million school improvement program launched last year to fix dilapidated county schools -- 80 percent of which were built before 1970.School system officials, looking to save money and meet deadlines, advertised for bids from program management companies twice recently, said Don Krempel, the school system's director of physical facilities.

Four Towson families filed suit Thursday in Baltimore County Circuit Court against the Board of Education, contending that it failed to comply with laws and policies in deciding to build a new elementary school - and calling for a stop to the project. The residents, whose properties border the proposed site for West Towson Elementary, contend that adding another building next to Ridge Ruxton School on North Charles Street - along with several hundred more students - raises safety and environmental concerns, according to the suit.

Proposed state budget cuts are expected to cost the Howard County government up to $13 million next fiscal year, but county officials say they are relieved because it could have been worse. County Executive Ken Ulman said county budget officials are working on a detailed accounting of Gov. Martin O'Malley's $310 million in proposed cuts to local government. But he is particularly relieved that the cost of teacher pensions wasn't shifted to local governments. "Once you start down that road, every year there's a tough time, you increase it a bit," Ulman said.

When Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. suggested recently that Maryland ought to spend $325 million on public school construction next year, quite a few people in Annapolis scoffed. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller opined that the state had been "overly generous" with such funding in the past, and aides to Gov. Martin O'Malley expressed doubts that Mr. Smith's recommended number could possibly be met. How quickly they forget. While it's true that the last three years have brought a record investment in schools, not only to build new ones but to repair or replace aging structures, far more is needed.

What is the mood coming into the legislative session this year? We are very carefully optimistic. We've overcome much more severe crises in our state's history than what we consider a yearlong blip on our economic radar. ... I'm an historian, and I know what our country has gone through in the past, and this is nothing. It's a deep recession. We're not facing a world war, we're not facing a depression, we're not facing a plague. We can learn from it, and we can survive. How do you manage a projected revenue gap of $1.9 billion?

Though County Council chairman Courtney Watson's push for a citizens committee to discuss ways to provide more schools and public infrastructure has drawn a tepid response from elected officials wary of tax increases, she maintains it is a vexing problem that must be addressed. "We have to come up with some consensus or we're going to really affect development options on U.S. 1," the Ellicott City Democrat said. School enrollment projections show all the elementary schools along the corridor could be overcrowded at some point in the next decade, which would trigger development delays.

The county is slipping into a financial straitjacket: School construction and renovation costs are rising as the revenues to cover them are static or falling, county officials said. At yesterday's quarterly meeting of the County Council and the school board, suggestions on new sources of revenue were not forthcoming. But any discussion of tax increases was put off, with officials instead sticking to a broad discussion of the issue during the gathering at board headquarters. "I'm interested in having a robust discussion about public policy," council Chairman Courtney Watson, an Ellicott City Democrat, said after the meeting.

Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. is taking a drubbing from vocal county residents who are upset over his support of some public school construction projects. The latest involves a 400-seat addition to Loch Raven High School, an expansion designed to help alleviate overcrowding in the Perry Hall and Towson areas. But on this project, the criticism of Mr. Smith is unfair. Some county residents want a new high school, but the projected enrollment figures aren't enough to justify state funding, and the Loch Raven addition is a reasonable alternative.

The Baltimore County school system's recent handling of requests for state money for its building projects was riddled with missteps, including late submissions, continual changes and lack of documentation, according to a memo from the head of the state's school construction program. "It appears that communication between the local government and the [school system] is very poor, resulting in miscommunications, hasty changes of scope, and lack of direction on major projects," David G. Lever, executive director of the state's Interagency Committee on School Construction, wrote in the April 22 memo to the other members of the panel.

The state Board of Public Works took the unusual step yesterday of withholding full approval of Baltimore County school officials' request for nearly $4 million to help expand Loch Raven High School - a move that fell short of calls to reject the project outright. The board's conditional approval was a response to mounting questions from local legislators and residents about the school system's plans to build the addition to alleviate crowding at high schools in the county's central and northeast regions.

With his approval ratings down and three legislative sessions now behind him, Gov. Martin O'Malley has recently taken to the radio airwaves to publicize his accomplishments. But his message differs strikingly from the AM stylings of Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who leads a weekly rage-filled bashing of his successor. Sorting through the rhetoric is no easy task, but at least Mr. O'Malley's message reveals some shades of gray. In Mr. Ehrlich's world, it's much simpler: Everything that happened since he left office is bad, no matter the inconvenient facts.