Students And Parents

Perched before 230 high school students he hopes will attend his university this fall, Johns Hopkins President William R. Brody began a presentation Thursday by telling them one of his students had been brutally killed. It seemed an odd way to start, some of the prospective students and their parents would later say. But they listened as Brody described how a burglar entered a fraternity house through an open door, came upon Christopher Elser and attacked him. The April 17 stabbing of the junior from South Carolina - the first homicide in Charles Village since November 2000 - serves as a stark reminder to prospective students and their parents that if they choose to attend Johns Hopkins, they are opting to go to school in one of the most violent cities in America.

THE SCHOOLS lacked enough desks. The students came. Classes were moved outside, under the schoolyard trees. Still, the students came. First-grade class size sometimes exceeded 100 students, with one teacher. And still they came. They came when the Republic of Kenya announced a year ago that as part of a national economic recovery plan, public schooling up to grade eight would be offered free. By government and World Bank project estimates, enrollment has swollen past 7 million, an increase of more than 1 million students.

WHEN THE leaders of nine private schools in the Baltimore area launched a campaign against teen drinking with a strong letter to parents last month, one signature was conspicuously missing. McDonogh School headmaster W. Boulton Dixon declined to sign the letter, saying it was redundant of his own letters home. "People are trying to read something into my not signing," said Dixon. "But this was no act of civil disobedience. I support what the letter says." But, as Dixon said in his letter of explanation to parents, he feared that "I can also beat the same drum so much that both students and adults tune out."

Last month, Principal Deborah Williams tried to have a serious talk with six Annapolis High School students who had been sent to her office for cutting class. "They laughed," Williams recalled. So she did something to get the teen-age boys' attention: She picked up printouts of the school's recent state test scores and flung them at the students, all of them black. "You are represented in these numbers," said Williams, also African-American, pointing out black students as a group lag behind other races in each subject and account for a higher dropout rate.

The living room of John Burke's home in Loch Raven is brimming with photographs of his son Jake. The tall, brown-haired teen-ager smiles on the room from all angles. "That's my most prized possession," Burke said, pointing to a photo of him and his son at Christmas two years ago. Father and son have their arms around each other and wear large grins. Their close relationship was shattered Oct. 11 last year, when Jake, then 19, was killed after the car he was riding in spun out of control on Interstate 83 near Ruxton Road in a heavy rainstorm.

Workmen moved furniture and computers inside yesterday and maintenance crews attached logos to the windows, all finishing touches for the Park School's new showcase, a three-story, $7 million arts center that officially opens today on the Old Court Road campus. Named the Wyman Arts Center, the 45,000-square-foot building - with dance and rehearsal studios, a black box theater, art gallery, keyboard studio, stage shop, digital imaging and photography studios and music and practice rooms - has been under construction for nearly two years.

When South River High School student Brian Misiewicz and his schoolmates boarded a plane bound for London last night, it wasn't with the blessing of Anne Arundel County school officials. But it was all right with their parents and the U.S. State Department. The dozen or so teen-agers are among hundreds of Maryland students who are going ahead with plans to visit foreign countries this spring, though local school officials have canceled field trips because of safety concerns. "I hope to get a better understanding of culture," said Brian, a 10th-grader who had never left American soil before.

Seventeen-year-old Danielle D. Adams has seen a student at Northern High School pull out a knife in the hallway. She has witnessed fights in the cafeteria and bathrooms and smelled marijuana in the stairwells. Once she saw a boy get attacked and thrown out the window of a bus. "You shouldn't have to go to school fearing for your life every day," she said. The Northeast Baltimore high school - where a freshman was beaten nearly to death in early November by a group that allegedly included fellow students - has spiraled out of control under new leadership this academic year, according to interviews with teachers, students and parents.

Howard County students might soon have more chances to get into the school district's coveted technology program. Technology Coordinator Richard Weisenhoff told the school board last night that it should consider expanding the program either to another school, or by adding 36 slots. The program is housed at Long Reach and River Hill high schools, and the 250 students admitted each year also take courses at the school system's state-of-the-art Applications and Research Lab in Ellicott City.

Israel has shown restraint in handling violent Arab protests Ann LoLordo's article "Building a state, stone by thrown stone" (Oct. 28) lacked any semblance of balance in reporting the daily confrontations between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. Ms. LoLordo wrote as if it is the daily duty of each Arab to go to the Ayosh junction, north of Ramallah, to confront Israelis with burning tires and stones. Her rendition fails to mention that the Israelis are not only confronting unarmed stone-throwers, but also shooting by armed Palestinians, who hide behind the smoke and the civilian rock-throwers.