Tesseract

No program in the modern history of the city school system has received the attention of Tesseract, Baltimore's bold venture in contracting education to a profit-making firm. Tesseract has come through its first academic year with generally positive marks. Schools are cleaner, computers costing million of dollars are in place and, most important, there are signs -- only signs -- that the grades of the 4,800 Tesseract students are on the upturn.Given the difficulties Education Alternatives Inc. encountered in getting Tesseract off the ground, this is a remarkable record for just nine months.

Insider transactions of 1,000 shares or more for public companies based in Maryland or with operations here. Marriott International Edwin D. Fuller, officer, exercised an option for 4,202 shares of Class A common at $28.22 each Nov. 29 and sold 4,202 shares at $36.51 each Nov. 29. Fuller now directly and indirectly holds 28,942 shares. Procter & Gamble Co. Bruce L. Byrnes, officer, sold 16,647 shares of common for between $74 and $76 each from Nov. 1 to Nov. 2 and now directly and indirectly holds 165,644.

Tesseract, Baltimore's experiment in contracting education to a profit-making firm, is a year old, and the only people who don't want it to succeed may be officials of the Baltimore Teachers Union and a few diehards who think government operations are more efficient than private operations.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, Superintendent Walter Amprey, members of the school board and most parents of the 4,800 students in the program are among its cheerleaders.Results of the first year are mixed but promising, so much so that Dr. Amprey and Education Alternatives Inc., the Minnesota firm operating nine city schools under contract from the local government, would like to expand, perhaps to include more secondary schools so that students could spend their entire education careers in the innovative program.

Buy into Edison Schools Inc. and you will get a first-rate reading curriculum, telephones in every classroom and computers that every child takes home after second grade. Choose Mosaica Education Inc. and you will see individualized lesson plans, Spanish in kindergarten and the study of civilizations from ancient to modern times. The two national companies advertise competing brands of education reform. Yet their sales pitches in Maryland are at heart the same. They promise to do what the Baltimore public school system has failed to do: reverse three elementaries' long decline.

It would be a shame if Baltimore's bold experiment in contracting public education to a private company were to be scuttled in a disagreement over enrollment figures. That is why the city should engage an auditor independent of both the Department of Education and Education Alternatives Inc. to determine who owes whom -- and what amount.At stake is about $500,000 which Superintendent Walter Amprey says the city overpaid EAI, based on overstated enrollment figures. That's not a huge amount in view of the $27 million-a-year contract held by EAI to manage nine schools.

On Mondays at 7 p.m., the voice of Meldon S. Hollis Jr. wafts over the airwaves of WEAA, Morgan State University's radio station. His talk show, "Middle Passage" -- the name for the voyage African slaves made to the New World -- is a free-wheeling discussion of issues confronting blacks.Mr. Hollis recently devoted an entire show to the controversy surrounding the Tesseract program -- nine city schools run by Educational Alternatives Inc. Tesseract, the former school board president says flatly, has become a smoke screen hiding other, far more serious issues.

In a bid to halt Baltimore's pioneering "Tesseract" experiment in school privatization, the teachers' union has challenged the legality of a city contract with a Minneapolis company to operate nine public schools.In its suit, the union contends that Baltimore's contract with Education Alternatives Inc. (EAI), now in its second year, violates charter requirements that the city maintain control of public schools.The lawsuit, filed this week in city Circuit Court, also claims that the five-year privatization venture discriminates against thousands of students because "Tesseract" schools receive more city money per pupil than do most other public schools in the city.

The Maryland State Teachers Association commissioned Olivia S. Reusing, a professor of education at Alvernia College in Reading, Pa., to report on Baltimore's "Tesseract" schools, those being operated by Education Alternatives Inc. of Minneapolis, a profit-making company.Dr. Reusing, whose doctorate is in elementary and early childhood education, spent two days in December conducting interviews and classroom visits in three of the nine Tesseract schools, Malcolm X Elementary, Harlem Park Elementary and Harlem Park Middle School.

Nathaniel Madison, a Baltimore father of four, won't tolerate criticism of the city's nine-school experiment in privatizing education."I think it's amazing really," said Mr. Madison, whose 4-year-old .. preschooler is learning to read on a computer at Malcolm X Elementary, one of the nine so-called "Tesseract" schools. "It's all new and exciting, just like being on a rocket ship."Mr. Madison was among the 375 parents who turned out at Harlem Park Middle School yesterday for a half-day school system conference bringing them together with educators in the program.

WASHINGTON -- Though he is upbeat about Baltimore's experiment in school privatization, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke told an audience of teachers here yesterday that he opposes expansion of the project at least until after a formal evaluation.But the mayor gave strong backing to the involvement of private companies in public schools, citing the nine-school "Tesseract" project and the decision to put Columbia-based Sylvan Learning Systems in charge of federally funded tutoring at six other schools.

TESSERACT, THE city's four-year experiment with school privatization whose last chapter was written with termination of the program March 6, has an epilogue that should not go by unnoticed.Call it the Dee Coleman matter. It concerns Deverne Coleman, 49, a first-grade teacher who was transferred against her will from one of the showcase Tesseract schools after she went public with her opposition to the program.Coleman's "administrative transfer" from Edgewood Elementary to Edgecombe Circle Elementary at the end of the 1994-1995 school year was hardly noticed, even in the school system.

Beverly Harmon's desk was clean, her in-box empty and the last trappings of a 3 1/2 -year educational experiment packed into fewer than a dozen cardboard boxes destined for Minnesota.With reluctance and a few tears, Mrs. Harmon locked the doors of the Tesseract Offices at Harlem Park Middle School, hugged her colleagues and ended another chapter in Baltimore education reform."I'm the last one. Turn out the lights and that's it," she said.For 18 months, Mrs. Harmon, a retired Montgomery County principal, has been the receptionist for Educational Alternatives Inc., the Minneapolis-based educational management firm that has been operating nine city schools since September 1992.

THE NINE "Tesseract" schools that were managed by Education Alternatives Inc. are now supposed to become "enterprise schools," just like all the others in Baltimore. In essence, they've jumped from one experiment to another. When will it end? When will the mayor and superintendent of schools be able to look parents in the eye and say, "We're going to do this for your children because we already know it works"?Parents with children in the EAI schools thought what was happening inside them worked.

MAYOR KURT L. SCHMOKE, an early supporter of Education Alternatives Inc., hadn't counted on this. One reason he felt comfortable giving teachers a big pay raise this year was belief EAI would agree to a reduction in its $44 million fee. He negotiated for weeks thinking an agreement would occur. When it became apparent that it wouldn't, he found himself painted into a corner he helped create. The teachers had their raise. Settling a special education lawsuit was costly. The legislature was withholding millions.

Education Alternatives Inc.'s grand experiment in school privatization took a mortal blow yesterday, leaving a two-part question unanswered after the company's rocky 3 1/2 years in Baltimore:Did EAI, a profit-making company, improve public education in Baltimore -- and make a profit in the bargain?EAI and its irrepressible chief, John Golle, still say yes -- and yes. But Tuesday, even as Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and the school board were preparing to administer the coup de grace, Mr. Golle was insisting that his company had never earned the money his foes had claimed in Baltimore and that the mayor and city finance officials, in insisting on a $7 million reduction in EAI's contract, had based their analysis on "capricious and erroneous information."

Julia Winder never believed that the controversial Tesseract program would be yanked from her school.Informed yesterday that Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke was moving to end the city's 3 1/2 -year experiment with Tesseract, the principal of Graceland Park-O'Donnell Heights Elementary winced, slapped her palm and said: "Let's walk. I need to walk.""I understand budgetary problems, but speaking from the heart, the disruption caused by termination will set our students back," she said."Consistency is everything in dealing with school improvement."

More than two years after Education Alternatives Inc. took over nine Baltimore schools, the city chose an independent evaluator yesterday to assess the "Tesseract" venture.Evaluating the remainder of the five-year experiment in school privatization falls to the Center for Educational Research at the University of Maryland Baltimore County -- the sole bidder even after the city extended its search for a consultant.Under the $207,560 contract approved yesterday by the Board of Estimates, the UMBC center will analyze progress in Tesseract schools.

An article Sept. 9 incorrectly reported the amount Baltimore is paying a private firm to run several cafeterias at city schools. The firm, Johnson Controls, will receive $70,000 under the contract.The Sun regrets the error.For many schoolchildren, the choices at the cafeteria lead to a daily dilemma: Will it be the casserole with the mystery meat or a bag of chips for lunch?At Baltimore's nine "Tesseract" schools, the food service is being turned over to a private firm that hopes to woo back dissatisfied students by allowing them to sample dishes and help revamp the menu.

ANY DECISION to terminate Education Alternatives Inc.'s stewardship of nine city schools should be based on the performance of EAI, not Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's need to cover a budget shortfall he helped create. There should be no disruption in the education of children in the Tesseract schools.School children didn't create the money problem. It resulted from the way the mayor andhis school superintendent handled school finances. Faced with the expense of settling a special education lawsuit and a big penalty for failing to meet a legislative mandate for management reforms, teachers still were granted a pay raise the city apparently couldn't afford.

Baltimore began moving yesterday to terminate its nationally watched school privatization contracts with Education Alternatives Inc. after the company failed to agree to a flat $7 million reduction in its management fee.The city's action came after EAI failed to respond to a 5 p.m. ultimatum and officials rejected "outright" a last-ditch proposal the company submitted Thursday, raising the prospect that the 3 1/2 -year experiment of having a private company...