School Officials

As a massage therapist, Janet Constantino is used to calming tensed-up shoulders and backs. But as she hovered over a cluster of computer carrels at a jam-packed Howard County library yesterday, the mother of two looked as though she could use a therapeutic rubdown of her own. Daughter Jaci, 6, tapped at a keyboard, her tired eyes filling with tears. Son Jacob, 4, looking bored, played a video over and over. And as Constantino paced back and forth, desperately tossing words of encouragement, it was hard to tell who might melt down first.

The chief justice's comment came in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision last week that sharply limits the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools. Roberts said school officials in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., had failed to show that their plans considered race in the context of a larger educational concept, and therefore did not meet a standard set in Brown v. Board of Education, the historic 1954 desegregation decision. ?The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.

An eighth-grader who was suspended on charges of bringing a knife to Lindale Middle School was not reponsible for the online hit list posted on her MySpace profile that targeted nine classmates, Anne Arundel County school officials said yesterday. Someone else posted the list on the 14-year-old girl's page April 24, nearly two weeks after she was accused of bringing in a pocketknife, George Lindley principal of the Linthicum school, wrote in a letter sent home with the more than 1,000 students.

Baltimore: Schools Delay closings vote, board is to be asked Baltimore school officials will ask city Board of Education members to delay for 30 days the planned vote on the closings of Thurgood Marshall and Hamilton middle schools at tonight's board meeting. School officials said yesterday at a meeting at the North Avenue headquarters that the proposed middle school closings will require more public hearings because of changes to their original proposal. Thurgood Marshall was originally scheduled to close in the summer of 2009, but the new proposal calls for the school to be shut down a year earlier.

From the outside, the rooms look like typical classrooms with cinder-block walls. But inside teachers, principals and administrators are gathering as often as they can to pore over every type of student data: attendance, grades, number of Advanced Placement exams taken, behavior referrals. These "war rooms" are popping up in Anne Arundel County public high schools and some middle schools in an effort to hammer out a strategy to boost academic performance and reduce dropout rates and truancy.

Nearly all sixth- through ninth-graders have received required vaccinations against chicken pox and hepatitis B, part of a push by Anne Arundel County public schools and the county Health Department to see that students comply with Maryland's immunization law. By the end of the school day Friday, 62 middle-schoolers and 217 ninth-graders lacked the necessary immunizations - fewer than 1 percent of students - school officials said, a substantial drop...

Just about a year ago, Baltimore had a $60 million surplus and Mayor Martin O'Malley stood with City Council President Sheila Dixon and pledged $25 million of it to help build and rebuild some of Baltimore's schools. Now mayor, Ms. Dixon is singing a different tune, proposing to take $5 million designated for the schools' capital budget and putting it into after-school programs. There's no question that students need more tutoring, recreation and other activities to enhance their academic experience and to keep them busy after school.

The College Board has placed a top Anne Arundel County high school on probation after a cheating scandal last spring, warning that the school will no longer be allowed to offer Advanced Placement exams if the problem reoccurs, school officials said yesterday. In its decision this week, the College Board also banned the instructor involved in the May 11 incident at Severna Park High School from administering any future AP exams and required the school's designated AP coordinator to attend a training workshop.

Having a qualified teacher in each classroom is a crucial requirement of the federal No Child Left Behind law, but a recent study suggests that teachers are coming and going as if through a revolving door, particularly younger teachers. And it estimates that the cost of so much turnover is more than $7 billion annually. Beyond the financial costs, however, the lack of consistent, high-quality teaching hurts students, especially those in high-poverty, low-performing schools with large minority populations.

Feeling pressed for time to open a school to help educate hundreds of chronically disruptive students who are struggling to pass state standardized tests, Baltimore County school officials have approved a $43 million, 30-year lease with a Baltimore real estate firm. The Secondary Academic Intervention Model School is scheduled to open in the fall at a large business park under construction along the White Marsh Boulevard extension in eastern Baltimore County. A developer began building the 50,000- square-foot school about a month ago. The school, which will be the district's fifth alternative-education facility, is to offer intensive reading and math instruction for disruptive students who are failing statewide assessments.

The death in May of 14-year-old Christopher Jones of Crofton at the hands of youths police identified as gang members put everyone on notice that juvenile gang violence isn't just a big-city problem. Police and prosecutors say youth gangs are active in every part of the state and that even middle schools are now prime recruiting grounds. Yet two years after the General Assembly tried to tighten state laws against violent juvenile gangs, authorities are still operating as if they've got one hand tied behind their backs when it comes to preventing such crimes, due in large part to confusion over how closely school and law-enforcement officials can cooperate to deter youth gang violence, along with when and what kinds of information they are permitted to share about suspected gang members and gang-related crimes.

Two Baltimore County high schools are among five nationwide to receive awards for arts education, school officials announced Thursday. The Carver Center for Arts and Technology, in Towson, and Patapsco High and Center for the Arts, in Dundalk, were named "national schools of distinction in arts education" by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This is the first time multiple schools from one district have been honored the same year, said Darrell M. Ayers, the center's vice president of education.

When it came time for a major renovation to a centuries-old barn that houses classrooms at the Key School in Annapolis, school officials were thinking practical, with an eye toward adding space and infusing technology, all at a good price. Then students had their say. The $5.5 million renovation to one of the school's original buildings on the campus near the shores of the Chesapeake Bay is a lesson in environmentally sustainable construction. A group of Key students successfully pushed for a green approach to the project, which added 10,000 square feet of space to the barn that is primarily used for middle school students, and now features a solar-paneled roof, recycled wood beams and a curtain wall of glass in both the front and back foyers.

Standardized test scores and other academic success indicators are rising among most Anne Arundel County public school students but not at fast-enough rates to satisfy tough federal standards, according to a report presented at a recent school board meeting. Despite gains in reading and math scores on state tests, minority, special education and English-language learners are still trailing behind their counterparts, according to a yearly update of the school system's strategic plan targeting successful completion of rigorous course work and academic performance.

Fifteen Anne Arundel County school bus routes were delayed Monday morning after the discovery that several school buses were damaged by apparent vandalism, police and school officials said. Police were dispatched to the 1400 block of Odenton Road, a lot where school buses are parked, and found that the electrical lines of 14 buses had been cut, said Justin Mulcahy, a police spokesman. "The buses were all inoperable," said Mulcahy. "It looks like the electrical lines were cut, unfortunately."

Destinee Alicia Parker died of swine flu at the University of Maryland Medical Center on Tuesday, and the next day, the 14-year-old's father went back to the hospital. James Parker wasn't there to tie up loose ends, and he wasn't there to identify his daughter's body, mourners at the girl's funeral learned Saturday. "Mr. Parker went to the hospital [Wednesday] and then he went to the hospital on Thursday because there were more sick babies in the hospital, and until they all get better, the fight is not over," said Camille Bell, principal of Montebello Elementary/Middle School.

The U.S. Constitution's guarantee of free speech doesn't include the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and neither should the Maryland state constitution's guarantee of an adequate, free public education cover all misbehaving students who deliberately set fires in public schools. Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso says he has the authority to enforce a zero-tolerance policy and permanently expel students involved with arson or explosives. That may seem harsh, but he insists that you can't have a functioning school system where setting fires is considered acceptable behavior.

The assistant principal at an Orthodox Jewish school in Northwest Baltimore has been indicted in the theft of more than $13,000 in school checks, which he is accused of depositing into his bank account, city prosecutors said. Rabbi Jay Kenneth Wagner, who worked at Yeshivat Rambam/Maimonides Academy of Baltimore at 6300 Park Heights Avenue until recently, was arrested and released Tuesday after posting a small cash bond, according to court records. The indictment was filed Sept. 10. Wagner, 32, of the 3400 block of Labyrinth Road in Northwest Baltimore has no previous arrests, according to Maryland's online court records.

Dozens of Baltimore County parents rallied Tuesday in Towson, continuing to push for air conditioning in a Lutherville middle school where they say a renovation project has made the classrooms intolerable on warm days. Ridgely Middle School parents have been seeking a solution for about two years, ever since the school was renovated with design features - tighter windows, lowered ceilings and an insulated roof - to maximize air-conditioning efficiency. But the cooling units were never installed because the project budget did not include money for the equipment, school officials have said.

Thousands of Prince George's County high school students missed a third day of classes Wednesday as school officials said it could take more than a week to sort out the chaos caused by a new computerized class scheduling system. Students were put in gyms, auditoriums, cafeterias, libraries and classes they didn't want or need at high schools across the county as their parents' fury over the logistical nightmare rose. "The school year comes up the same time every year," said Carolyn Oliver, the mother of a 16-year-old senior who spent Wednesday in the senior lounge at Bowie High School.