Two Schools

Seven thousand dollars isn't much when you're faced with the needs of 500 students and 44 teachers, but Bakerfield Elementary School Principal Joseph Stevens will take whatever he can get. In a school that draws pupils from some of the county's poorest families, there is never a shortage of needs for books, pencils and even board games used for teaching math to pupils who don't respond well to the traditional classroom approach, Stevens said. The Aberdeen school will get a little help from the federal government.

Baltimore County school leaders have paid a total of $150,989 in a settlement with two high-ranking employees who signed contracts with the former superintendent, even though the school system and new superintendent contend that the contracts were not legal. The two employees, who left voluntarily, had signed contracts with former Superintendent Joe A. Hairston before he retired that would have triggered payments of nearly a half-million dollars if his successor fired them. The county school administrators union criticized the agreements, and some experts questioned whether they were valid.

Parents in a Silver Spring neighborhood have filed a civil rights complaint with the federal government, accusing local school officials of turning two elementary schools into warehouses for some of the poorest, minority children in Montgomery County.The complaint, filed yesterday with the Department of Education, alleges school board decisions over the last 13 years have led to segregation at New Hampshire Estates and Oak View elementary schools, depriving students of an equal education.

The two high-ranking school employees who signed contracts with former Baltimore County Superintendent Joe A. Hairston before he retired have both left the system. The contracts would have paid the employees nearly a half-million dollars if new Superintendent Dallas Dance had fired them when bringing in his own leadership team. Dance had reassigned Donald Peccia, the assistant superintendent of human resources, and Phyllis Reese, the chief communications officer, when he took over on July 1. On Tuesday night, the school board approved Peccia's retirement and Reese's resignation, both effective Aug. 1, as part of personnel moves.

On most mornings, Principal Renee Johnson takes a walk through the halls of Chesapeake Terrace Elementary in southeastern Baltimore County, popping in to see students and the school's nine classroom teachers. Less than two miles away, her counterpart at Edgemere Elementary, Bob Findley, takes a similar walk, albeit with more stops: He has 24 classroom teachers. With the help of a recently formed boundary-change committee, school officials are seeking to balance enrollment between the two schools.

They started from the lowest possible point, with reading proficiency rates in the single digits and dismal learning environments. Ever since three Baltimore elementary schools were put under the auspices of a for-profit company nearly nine years ago, they have gotten money and resources above and beyond what other city schools receive to try to turn themselves around. Today, the schools' climates are vastly improved under the management of New York-based EdisonLearning, but only one of the three is meeting academic targets.

Every five lessons, City Springs first-grade teacher Harriet Brown tests her students. Do the children know that "ph" sounds like "f" and that "strip" is not "stripe?" Can they read the little story about the fox who tried to con a girl out of her ice cream cone?The school's reading program requires this regular measurement.At Lyndhurst Elementary, teacher Betty Pierce thinks she knows how well each of her first-graders can read, but it's just her educated guess, drawn from 30 years in the classroom.

Recent city and state inspections of boilers in Baltimore schools have revealed widespread code violations and safety problems that will require about $2 million in repairs and replacements this fall.When the inspections began last month, city officials did not anticipate purchasing large equipment and predicted that the majority of repairs required would be small jobs, such as installing safety valves.Now, the evaluation provides the city its first broad look at the effect of putting off boiler maintenance for years.

At City Springs Elementary, where phonics ruled instruction last year, first-graders sounded out words in twice-daily reading classes, drilled relentlessly with a teacher and an aide and took ,, weekly tests.At Lyndhurst elementary, children memorized lists of words and read aloud from storybooks; their classrooms had no aides and some teachers rarely gave diagnostic tests.While the reading instruction at the two schools couldn't have been more different, their students' results on citywide tests released last month, it turns out, were equally mediocre.

Tickets for the Calvert Hall-Loyola Thanksgiving Day football game scheduled for 10 a.m. next Thursday at Towson State University can be purchased at the two schools. Call Calvert Hallat (410) 825-4266 or Loyola at (410) 823-0601.

Editor's note: Each week, InsideMdSports.com provides this blog with a Maryland recruiting feature that previously appeared as premium content on its site. Everywhere they go these days, Aaron Harrison and Andrew Harrison are a featured attraction. The twin brothers from Travis High in Richmond, Texas, ranked as the No. 1 shooting guard and No. 1 point guard in the Class of 2013, respectively, tend to draw big crowds of spectators and college coaches.

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office has released surveillance photographs of a suspect wanted in connection with the vandalism of two Westminster-area schools on Christmas Day. Just before 3 p.m. on Dec. 25, deputies responded to a burglar alarm at the William Winchester Elementary School on Monroe Avenue just outside of Westminster. On Wednesday, Jan. 11, the Sheriff's Office released a surveillance image, and said it shows a white male, approximately 25 years old, with a brown hair, seen approaching the school from the Englar Road side with two bricks in hand.

More than a week after Hurricane Irene blew through Maryland, power has been restored to almost all public schools in Baltimore, Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County. In Baltimore County, Winfield Elementary is closed Tuesday because it doesn't have power, and in the city, Lockerman Bundy Elementary is also closed to students, the systems said. Lockerman Bundy staff should report to Mary Ann Winterling Elementary. Irene played havoc with the schedules of educators, parents and students, as schools lost, gained, and in some instances re-lost power from day to day. Text NIGHTLIFE to 70701 to sign up for Baltimore Sun nightlife and music text alerts

A charter network that has two schools in Baltimore has a high level of student attrition and of private and public funding that have positioned it to be successful, according to a national report published Thursday. The report on Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), which opened its first school in Baltimore about a decade ago and recently reached a long-term deal to remain in the city for another 10 years, suggests that the national charter school network's high performance is a result of having advantages over its public school counterparts.

Sister Mary Frieda Chetelat, a nun with the Sisters of Mercy who was admired for her talents as a teacher, her social activism and her relentless humor, died on March 3. She was 97 and had been in the order for seven decades, during which she also was a principal at two Baltimore schools and a teacher at several others. She was born Bernadine Mary Chetelat on Dec. 18, 1913, the first of Harry and Frieda Chetelat's 10 children, all of whom were born in the family's home on Lasalle Avenue in Baltimore.

Annapolis Elementary School is the oldest and longest continuously used public school in the state, a two-building gem in the city's historic district. As the Anne Arundel Board of Education signed off on its revitalization project, it lauded plans that ensure that the two-structure facility maintains its historical ambience. Annapolis Elementary was one of two area schools the board voted to improve at Wednesday's meeting. It also voted to adopt designs to modernize the Germantown Elementary School for use by the Phoenix Annapolis Center.

An article in yesterday's editions incorrectly quoted Tyson Tildon, president of the Baltimore school board, on the board's plans for possible cuts in the budgets of City College and the School for the Arts.In fact, Tildon said there are no plans to cut $2.2 million from the budgets of those two schools in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 3/26/98

Hampstead and Manchester elementary schools are joining in a program that allows teachers from one building to pair up with teachers in the other and coach each other on better ways to do their jobs.Principals of the two schools heard their teachers saying they wanted more opportunities for professional feedback in nonthreatening ways, in addition to the evaluation that administrators do.So Hampstead Principal Judy Walker and Manchester Principal Robert Bruce wrote a grant request to the county superintendent.

Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold said Tuesday that he plans to fund school resource officers at two more county middle schools, in an attempt to curb student violence and bullying. Leopold has pledged about $200,000 in funding from the forthcoming county budget to pay for school resource police officers at Corkran Middle School in Glen Burnie and Wiley H. Bates Middle School in Annapolis. Leopold said he got a request from the Parent Teacher Association at Bates to take action.