School Districts

WASHINGTON -- After years of sidestepping a widening controversy, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to clarify the legal responsibility of school officials when teachers or counselors sexually molest or assault students.The court took on a case from Texas involving a middle school girl who wants to sue a male teacher for damages over a sexual relationship that lasted for more than a year, when she was 14 and 15 years old.The girl, identified in court papers only as "Jane Doe," contends that the school district in Lago Vista, a town of 2,200 people northwest of Austin, was to blame because it gave the teacher "complete authority" over her, even though high-level officials did not know what he did to her.Because he was her teacher, the man "had the power to withhold or grant his favors as a teacher, the power to withhold or grant good grades and to govern every aspect of his students' conduct," the appeal argued.

As Jill Rosen highlights in her recent article ("The Littlest Vegans," March 20), an increasing number of today's youth are growing up on a diet loaded with healthier and more humane plant-based foods. Since we develop lifelong eating habits at a young age, this is encouraging news. Sadly, those who acquire a taste for cholesterol- and fat-laden foods likes cheeseburgers and fried chicken today are often the diabetes and heart disease patients of tomorrow. The Baltimore City Public Schools helped set the stage for this important discussion in 2009, when it became the first school system in the U.S. to serve a 100 percent meatless menu every Monday.

Most school districts have received waivers from the state to reduce the number of days students have to make up because of snow in December and February. State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick has waived five days for 12 of the state's 24 school districts, including Baltimore City and Anne Arundel, Kent, St. Mary's, Prince George's and Montgomery counties. Baltimore County recently requested that the state allow the county to reduce its calendar by one school day, which would make the last day of school June 18. Grasmick has not acted on the request.

Students at Howard High School emerge from cafeteria lines with plates as green as well-manicured lawns. They reach for steamed broccoli and fresh lettuce as quickly as they do macaroni and cheese and popcorn chicken. And they say they their healthful eating habits extend beyond school hours. "Away from school, I'm a big burger guy," Howard High senior Joshua Steward said. "And a burger, you know what color it is. So I try to make it greener, stacking on lettuce, tomatoes, everything to make it healthier, and it always turns out great.

Bernard Sadusky, the interim state school superintendent, sent a note to local school superintendents on Tuesday afternoon after the state police told him that schools should be on the look out for suspicious letters. Several schools in the northeast have been sent letters containing white powder in the mail with a Texas post mark. The letters were a hoax, and none were sent to Maryland schools that have been discovered. "We've not as yet heard of any instances, but we can't be too careful," said Bill Reinhard, a spokesman for the Maryland State Department of Education.

School closings and delays over the past two months of Arctic weather have played havoc with academic and home schedules, driving parents, students and teachers alike to the point of desperation. And every time classes are canceled or start late, some people complain that the weather's really not that bad where they live.In Harford County, Maryland's leader in the weather-shortened school calendar this season, the Harford PTA Council sees a possible solution in adjacent Baltimore County.Schools in Baltimore County's northern Hereford zone, which is hardest hit by winter conditions, may close or open late without affecting decisions for the rest of the county's schools.

Some of Maryland's smaller school systems are speeding down the information superhighway, leaving larger school districts eating their cyberdust.Despite comparatively smaller budgets, Kent, Queen Anne's and Worcester counties began investing in computers five or more years ago. Now, their students "surf" the Internet, moving via modem through an international network of databases."

Gov. Martin O'Malley's budget chief is recommending a $37.9 million cut to many of the state's largest school districts in the middle of the academic year, The Baltimore Sun has learned. If cuts were applied evenly to the 13 affected districts, Baltimore would get $6.5 million less from the state this year, according to the proposal now being studied by O'Malley. Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Howard counties would sustain cuts of $1.5 million or more. The cut would help the state close a $415 million gap in its current budget, which has been battered by declining revenues linked to the national economic downturn.

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- It was the public comment portion of the school board meeting, and Superintendent Jim May endured about 90 minutes of verbal abuse until a speaker finally praised him as the best school chief in Florida.Smiling broadly, May rose from his chair at last week's regular meeting of the Escambia County, Fla., school board. He reached for his wallet, gave the man a bearhug and handed him a $5 bill.Though the money did change hands, May's gesture was mostly in jest.Mostly.May is one of a dying breed.

The "APEX" program, Maryland's ambitious, five-year school aid initiative, is on a collision course with fiscal reality.Enacted with high hopes in 1987, the "Action Plan for Educational Excellence" was intended to boost the state's share of aid to local school districts.But as the program enters its fifth year, that share is projected to be exactly what it was at the start.The millions of extra dollars pumped into local education simply weren't enough to keep pace with spiraling costs, fiscal experts say.And the well has begun to run dry.State legislators, under pressure to chop the budget because of the state's serious economic problems, already are talking about cuts in the $87 million funding increase that state law mandates for the APEX program in fiscal 1992, which begins July 1.The APEX law will require an even bigger increase in state funding for fiscal 1993 -- an estimated $182 million.

The welcome lifting of the federal consent decree on Baltimore City Public Schools does not mean all is well for students with disabilities in Baltimore and Maryland - far from it. Yet, the General Assembly rarely pays any attention to the fact that special education isn't nearly special enough. Hopefully that will change. Pending legislation gives lawmakers a chance to at least take a small step to improve the education of students with disabilities. As things now stand, students across the range of disabilities - from intellectual limitations to language impairments to dyslexia - are denied the opportunity to meet academic standards because they are not provided services to which they are entitled under federal and state laws.

After a couple months of paying for lunch with their palms, students at 10 Carroll County schools are going back to buying pizza and tots using less Bond-like methods. While parent concerns about privacy led their superintendent to hit the breaks on the PalmSecure technology , they can expect to be asked for their biometrics again - and again and again - as they grow older, and even to willingly pay (whatever the method) to give them up. Thanks in no small part to Hollywood , security is the first application many of us consider when we think about biometrics, or measuring or analyzing biological data.

School officials in Baltimore and Baltimore County pledged Thursday to track, for the first time, automated camera citations that are issued to privately owned school buses hired to transport public-school children. The assurances came after The Baltimore Sun reported that since 2009 cameras have caught hundreds of school buses speeding near the schools they serve, often with children aboard. Privately owned buses have received at least 800 speed camera tickets in the city, while city-owned buses have amassed more than 50, The Sun found by analyzing citation records.

Mary Klatko grew up in Pennsylvania eating nutritious foods, some fresh from the family garden and cooked from scratch. When she was named Howard County's director of food and nutrition services 26 years ago, she assumed everyone ate that way, and though she would discover the contrary, she still incorporated a healthful-eating approach into the school system's menus. So Klatko was ecstatic, though not surprised, to learn that Howard County received an A-plus from the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which issues its School Lunch Report Card detailing how well school districts nationwide meet federal guidelines for healthful school lunches at elementary schools.

All of us can agree that the findings of a recent state audit of the Baltimore City school system are unacceptable. There is no excuse for wasting money, and the burden is now on the city schools leadership to fix the problems. While we monitor that progress, it's time to take a step back and consider how to move forward to benefit our kids. We cannot allow these financial missteps to sidetrack us from providing high-quality educational environments for our children. Concerns by some elected leaders about the city school system's ability to handle its finances could cloud the prospects of an important piece of legislation that will be considered by the General Assembly early next year - a measure that would allow us to begin rebuilding our aging and inadequate school buildings.

As a Baltimore native and former 25-year Texas resident who has recently returned to Maryland, please allow me to correct Susan Reimer 's misrepresentation of Texas public schools ("From the land of Rick Perry, the proud paddlers," Oct. 8). Texas public schools are regulated by local school districts called Independent School Districts. Each district makes its own rules. Some have zero tolerance policies that have led to 7-year-olds being suspended for their haircuts or hugging other students.

Parents will have a better chance this fall to rescue their children from underperforming schools across the Baltimore region, thanks to a new federal law. But moving to a better school still might prove more difficult than Congress intended. The No Child Left Behind Act, signed this year by President Bush, requires every school district to give parents of students in poorly performing schools a chance to transfer their children to higher-achieving schools - and it requires the school districts to pay for the buses to take them there.

As the school year finally gets under way, public school students across the state will be writing more often and learning to think differently in math class, as the state begins major education reforms that will change everything from the curriculum to the way teachers are evaluated. While some of the changes — which districts agreed to make in exchange for more federal funding — have faced resistance from teachers, others have already been embraced in classrooms. Baltimore City has tried a number of the most radical reforms as it attempted to turn around its perpetually poor-performing schools.

A dozen Maryland school districts have stated their intent to vie for up to $40 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education, which has launched a new phase of its Race to the Top competition, started in 2010 to infuse $4 billion into radical educational reforms. The Baltimore-area public school systems that plan to apply for the grant are Baltimore city, Baltimore County and Howard County, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Nearly 900 school systems from across the country will compete for district-based grants that the federal department says will focus on providing resources for innovative and individualized instruction and fostering teacher-student relations in the classroom.

By one measure, the most attractive school district in the Baltimore region isn't the one that probably comes to mind. Real estate site Trulia crunched the numbers to see which districts have a lot of elementary-school-age children -- more than the number of kids too young for school -- as a way of identifying "where parents move, and where future parents might move if they follow today's parents' footsteps. " The local winner: not Howard County, despite its reputation as a place where people move for the schools.