School Year

Four years ago, award-winning math teacher Linda Eberhart began gathering her colleagues in Baltimore schools to talk about what was working in their classrooms and what wasn't. Now a new study shows that city students whose teachers participate in Eberhart's program - called MathWorks - post significantly higher test scores than their peers. Among sixth-graders whose teachers attended monthly Thursday night sessions last academic year, 70 percent passed the state's standardized math test.

THE ISSUE: Do you like having the weeklong spring break for public school students, or would you prefer a shorter break that would allow students to end the school year a few days earlier? YOUR VIEW: Send e-mail responses by Thursday to howard.speakout@baltsun.com. A selection of responses will be published Sunday. Please keep your responses short and include your name, address and telephone number. Addresses and phone numbers will not be published.

Rosemary Lather can't get enough of teaching music. The veteran educator, who plays violin, is orchestra director at River Hill and Marriotts Ridge high schools. But every Thursday, Lather adds a third orchestra, this one made up of middle-schoolers, to her teaching responsibilities. Since 1991, Lather has directed Howard County's Middle School Gifted and Talented Orchestra. The group attracts the best young strings players in the area. "I love high school, but it's very refreshing to still work with the middle-schoolers," Lather said.

City children will be given backpacks filled with school supplies at the mayor's annual back-to-school rally scheduled for today at school system headquarters on North Avenue. The backpacks will be handed out during a rally from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., during which parents will receive information about the school year that starts Monday. Students also will be able to get free haircuts. "I believe that this effort will help give our children the right tools to start the school year off right," Mayor Sheila Dixon said in a statement.

Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso is asking private foundations for $25 million to jump-start a stalled reform effort by creating two dozen combined middle/high schools that would operate with outside partnerships and autonomy from central headquarters. In a confidential presentation to philanthropists that was obtained by The Sun, Alonso says that thousands of city students - including many who are overage and many interested in vocational programs - aren't getting the opportunities they need in existing schools.

Furthering his hands-on approach to running education in Baltimore, city schools chief Andres Alonso secured the authority last night to sign off on any student suspension lasting more than a week. Until now, principals have had the discretion to suspend a student for up to two weeks. Under the policy change that the school board approved, they must obtain permission from Alonso or his designee to suspend a student for longer than five days. The board voted unanimously, with one abstention, in favor of the change.

After enjoying three relatively scandal-free years, the Howard County school system seemed to be hit by one embarrassing incident after another this past school year. In highly publicized arrests, three teachers were charged in separate incidents with having improper sexual contact with students, and a veteran teacher was charged with possession of crack cocaine on school property. Days before the end of classes, a 15-year-old was charged with bringing a semiautomatic handgun and an ammunition clip to his high school.

Howard County is considering the formation of its own mini-fleet of school buses. The buses would be used to fill in when private contractors have trouble providing all the buses needed each day to cover the system's routes. The plan is for the school system to purchase two buses and hire three drivers during the 2008-2009 school year. If officials are pleased with the results, they would increase the substitute fleet to 10 buses and hire more drivers during the 2010-2011 school year.

Teachers, parents and administrators in Baltimore County are getting a head start on the next school year -- about 700 of them are meeting this week to create school improvement plans.The three-day seminar, which began yesterday, is the largest for the annual event first held three years ago to help educators refine their goals, said Superintendent Anthony G. Marchione. He visited Perry Hall Middle School, one of two activity sites. Perry Hall High School is the second site."The feedback has been that the planning sessions are very helpful," he said.

Residents of Hughes Shop Road packed a development review hearing yesterday, questioning county administrators on a private school's plans to construct a $1.2 million building in their neighborhood.The Montessori School of Westminster has purchased a 27-acre parcel about 1 1/2 miles north of Route 140, outside the corporate limits of the city.The school recently submitted to the county its preliminary plans for a 12,000-square-foot building.The review panel heard numerous comments from residents who oppose the project based on traffic and safety issues and the lack of public water and sewerage.

Baltimore public school principals say they are spending less time on improving the quality of teaching in their schools than they did before schools chief Andr?s Alonso instituted changes in the system a year ago, according to a recently released survey. Advocates for Children and Youth and the Public School Administrators and Supervisors Association asked principals at the end of last school year whether their new autonomy over budget and school operations was helping them do their jobs better.

As Baltimore schools opened Monday, students streamed into Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, which even the seniors didn't recognize after a two-year, $28 million renovation that transformed the worn interior into one better able to support students studying math and the sciences. Among the school's new features are science labs and a robotics lab where students can design robots on computers, build them in a shop and operate them in a large room. The interior boasts wide hallways, larger windows, and a new cafeteria and library.

She sat at the steering wheel, her face as eager as a student's on her first day of class. Susan Keyes has been driving bus No. 860 for Harford County public schools for seven years, and at 6:20 a.m. Thursday, she idled the big engine in front of the spanking-new Bel Air High School. She was waiting for Robert Tomback, the new superintendent, to get on. It was the first day of the new school year, and it all had a bittersweet feel. To her left, Keyes could see the partially disassembled husk of the old Bel Air High, which is slated for demolition next week.

The Baltimore City school board approved a contract with Teach for America on Tuesday night that will allow up to 200 teachers into the city's public schools during the coming school year. The cost to city schools of $450,000 includes recruitment, selection and training of new teachers, who commit to their posts for two years. Schools chief Andr?s Alonso said the contract only covers one year because of the current economic climate. "Given the changes in the market with regards to teachers in Baltimore City, we need to be careful of the commitments we make in the long term," he said.

In recent years, Baltimore County schools have seen fewer teacher resignations and vacant positions at the start of an academic year, according to a district report on staff trends. "We are retaining more teachers now than we have over the past five years," said Donald A. Peccia, the district's assistant superintendent for human resources, during a presentation to the school board Tuesday night. Peccia also described the number of teacher vacancies over the past several years - ranging from three to seven - as "amazingly low," particularly in a system of more than 8,500 teachers.

With local governments cutting budgets during the recession and teachers unwilling to leave secure jobs, local school districts are hiring far fewer new teachers for the coming school year. Baltimore County will be hiring about 350 fewer teachers than it did three years ago, and Howard County will need half the number of new teachers it hired just two years ago - about 200. Anne Arundel County has hired 140 new teachers, down from 500 the year before and 700 two years ago. Even the city, which traditionally has opened schools with teacher vacancies and has unqualified teachers in some classrooms, will be hiring substantially fewer teachers, and many will come through programs such as Teach for America, which trains recent college graduates for two-year stints in urban school systems.

Ten Baltimore schools are going through major changes this summer as the city school system begins efforts to close seven underperforming schools and expand three that are thriving. Some changes have been upsetting. At Paul Laurence Dunbar Middle School, staff members have raised concerns about absorbing the National Academy Foundation into their building this summer. The two schools will share the Dunbar site for the coming school year before Dunbar, which has struggled to maintain enrollment in recent years, closes next summer.

The fight over the fate of Towson Catholic High School escalated Tuesday when the alumni association filed suit against the school's parish and its pastor over the abrupt closing of the school. The group is seeking an injunction to keep the school open at least another year. "This closing is a slap in the face to the alumni and to anyone who ever loved this school. We were ready to remedy this through various options, but we could not get the archdiocese to the table," said alumni association president Paul Mecinski, who announced the lawsuit at a rally last night.

Hundreds of Maryland educators gathered at a Baltimore County high school Monday with a singular focus: examining what drives students out of school - and what it will take to get them to stay. Even though the state has been recognized nationally for its improvements in student performance, officials said Monday that there is still work to do to lower the dropout rate. "We've reduced the performance gap, but not by nearly enough. We're sending more children of color to college, but not nearly enough," Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown told the crowd attending the dropout prevention leadership summit at Randallstown High School.

There will be no bonuses for Maryland's 188 public school athletics departments this year. The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association raised enough money through state tournament ticket sales and corporate sponsorship to fund its day-to-day operation and still hold a little in reserve, but there is no big surplus as had built up in the previous few years. In 2007, the MPSSAA gave each school $1,000. Last year, each got $500. Ned Sparks, MPSSAA executive director, said that surplus was exceptional, but he had expected a small surplus this year that never materialized.