School Officials

While school officials are expanding Taneytown Elementary, Taneytown officials want water lines extended to the school, plus improvements to a small bridge and 1,000 feet of Trevanion Road."

Saying the state has shortchanged Baltimore's efforts to revive its underachieving schools, the city school board is urging the governor to come up with more money -- or face the prospect of another bitter court battle. The school board sent Gov. Parris N. Glendening a strongly worded letter yesterday complaining that he and state legislators had failed to provide the necessary funds for classroom reforms. "The legislative session has now ended, and the funds appropriated for the city schools fall far short of satisfying these most critical instructional priorities, despite the state's billion-dollar surplus," wrote board President J. Tyson Tildon.

With more wintry weather in the forecast this week, Carroll County school officials are soliciting ideas for making up lost days. With February just starting, the county already has one day to make up because it has used more than the four emergency closing days that were built into the 2003-2004 school calendar, said Superintendent Charles I. Ecker. "There's more snow coming," said Ecker. "We want to get the word out about the various options we have for the makeup days." Ecker is considering the Presidents Day holiday, Feb. 16, as a possible makeup day. He will submit a recommendation on making up lost school days when the county school board meets Feb. 11. The county school system must obtain a waiver from the State Department of Education to eliminate an official public school holiday.

Carroll school officials asked the county's legislative delegation yesterday for a measure requiring police to notify the superintendent when a student is charged with the sale, manufacture or distribution of drugs.Del. Joseph M. Getty of Manchester introduced such a bill last year after two teen-agers charged in the drug death of a 15-year-old Westminster High School student returned to school two days later.School officials were unaware the two had been charged.One reason Getty's statewide bill was shelved last year was that an estimated 50 percent of the juvenile drug offenders live in Baltimore, and it was believed the bill would create too much paperwork there, he said.

The county Board of Education's record-keeping is so antiquated thatthe school system is the only one in Maryland that will not meet state reporting requirements for attendance records next September, unless it makes a major investment in computers.That was one example provided the County Council yesterday during a two-hour sales pitch by school officials on why they need $1.7 million for a mainframe computer as part of the 3-year-old Integrated School Information System (ISIS).The meeting was set up to give the board a chance to answer inquiries from council members about the system, which is designed to integrate classroom instructional needs with administrative and financialrecords into one computer system.

School board members and three key members of the school system trekked to Annapolis last week to request more construction money from the state. In the annual event known as "Begathon," school officials made a pitch to state politicians, expressing the need for more money. In Howard's case, officials requested more than $40 million for an addition at Waverly Elementary, a new school in the western part of the county and a replacement building for Bushy Park Elementary School. "It went well," said Raymond Brown, the system's chief operating officer.

A SITE in Marriottsville may or may not become the county's 12th high school around 2005. But either way, early machinations involving the acreage help illustrate the blinders school officials wear when it comes to recognizing the role of amateur sports groups here. Preliminary plans for what is referred to as a new north county high school show that education officials likely would claim yet three more playing fields that youth teams use now - with no apparent substitution or trade mentioned publicly.

A former treasurer of the Jemicy School's Parent Teacher Organization, charged with stealing $110,000 from the organization's bank accounts, has been released on $50,000 bail.Howard Laing Epstein, 38, who disappeared the day before the school reported the theft Jan. 31, turned himself in Monday to Baltimore County police. Police said they did not know where he had been. He was arrested, charged with misappropriation of funds and two counts of theft, and was released on bond.Mr. Epstein, a self-employed accountant who lives in the 8200 block of Anita Road in Stevenson, was indicted last week by a Baltimore County grand jury.

Baltimore school officials fired a Paul Laurence Dunbar High School business manager yesterday as police investigated a report of $32,000 missing from a school account made up of money raised by students and parents.During a news conference and in a press release issued yesterday, school officials identified the employee as Christine White, 30, of Baltimore and said she was under investigation.Police spokesman Robert W. Weinhold Jr. and Leonard Hamm, chief of police for the schools, confirmed that an investigation had begun.

An East Baltimore principal has been forced out of her job for suggesting to an 8-year-old boy that his penis might be cut off if he did not stop making sexually explicit comments to his female classmates.School officials say Colyn Harrington, the principal at Johnston Square Elementary School, intended to scare the boy and not physically harm him. But Harrington went too far, said the principal's supervisor, Barry Williams, when she had a janitor bring a dinner knife into her office and put it down on the desk in front of the boy.Harrington, 63, left the building Monday and is on a leave of absence.