Western High School

Facing a segregated Baltimore County school system that taught blacks only up to the 11th grade, Dorothy Briscoe and her parents did the one thing they knew would secure her a high school diploma.They told a fib.She pretended to be a Baltimore resident and signed up for Frederick Douglass High School by using a relative's address."But don't tell anyone," she said last week, laughing about her 50-year-old indiscretion.No one is likely to begrudge her the fib she told to get an education -- not now, as she retires as head of the mathematics department at Western High School, one of the city's elite.

JOE WILSON, principal of Baltimore City College, sat at the table, adorned nattily in the official school tie: black and orange slanted stripes, with an emblem of the immediately recognizable Castle on the Hill embedded in the orange.Wilson recalled when he came to City, "about five years and 15 days ago," he said in an April 12 interview."I found on arrival a building almost unusable," Wilson remembered. "The roof was falling in. Air and water were blowing through the windows. The morale of the staff and students reflected they were living in a building with no heat."

WESTERN High School's Breezy Bishop is probably the best coach of any sport at any level in Baltimore. (Others will argue for Coppin State's Fang Mitchell and North Baltimore Aquatic Club's Murray Stephens; let them.) Her girls basketball teams have won 424 games and lost 40.Her value to the city magnet school, one of two public high schools for girls in the country, goes further. A phys ed teacher as well, she has guided generations of girls to see how sports NTC dedication can gain them as well as boys admission and financial aid at many fine colleges.

Claudietta Johnson thinks more money would help Baltimore's public schools, but isn't the key to every problem.Charles L. Maker believes a modification of employee benefits must be discussed as part of reform of the schools, but change can't come solely on the backs of teachers.Bonnie Copeland doesn't buy the idea that a new school board must clean house to make progress among the city's 100,000 public school children."There's a lot in this system that's good, and the new board needs to recognize that," Copeland said.

In the words of Shonda Green, she "really had it going on." Only 17, she had her career plotted: work as a fashion designer for a few years and later get into computer programming.She was focused, outgoing, confident and smart -- she scored more than 1,300 on her PSAT, the SAT pretest, last year, her junior year at Western High School. She was creative and wanted to become the "next Versace."On Friday, Shonda died at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center from injuries suffered Aug. 27 in a fire at a friend's house in Woodlawn.

For congregants of one Baltimore church, yesterday's citywide Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day was a godsend -- a chance to cleanse their building of all the solvents, sprays and nasty spirits lurking there."

James H. Muir, a poet, writer, linguist, semanticist and city schoolteacher who was known for inspiring his students in Shakespeare and English literature, died Jan. 12 of prostate cancer at his home in the Mount Vernon area Baltimore. He was 65.Mr. Muir retired in 1993 from Western High School, where he had taught for 27 years. He started his career in the early 1960s at Hampstead Hill Junior High School, and taught later at the old Western High School on Centre Street, which moved to its Falls Road location in 1967.

Athletic director Eva Scott shares her tiny, windowless office with four other instructors at Western High School.There is barely enough room to think. Their desks are cluttered with papers and books and Scott's wastebasket is full.On this particular day Scott makes a call to ensure the "girls" get transported to an event. The bulletin board behind her is a picture collage of young women competing and achieving victory in sports.Scott, too, has achieved victories, starting in 1958 when she was beginning her teaching career at Western.

Now I've done it. Now I've really done it. Breezy Bishop, the basketball coach at Western High School, is angry with me.In last Saturday's column, I extolled the virtues of Dunbar athletics, especially the school's football team, which won its second straight state championship the same day. This past Monday, Ms. Bishop personally delivered a note -- attached to a brochure about the 1995-1996 Western basketball team -- to Brian King, a health teacher at...

They came together Thursday, as they do every five years. They sang their school song, exchanged pictures of grandchildren, ate Pikesville Hilton chicken and thanked Providence "for still being able to limp in here," as one of them said.The reunion of the Western High School Class of 1935 attracted 81 women, about a fourth of the graduates who had walked across the commencement stage on North Avenue on a humid June evening 60 years ago.There wasn't a lot of speechifying at this year's gathering.

Here's a fact: Chante Bonner, 16, spoke out at a public forum on school safety and charged that the police officer assigned to Western High School sat at her desk instead of patrolling the halls. Here's the allegation: Her father called me on Friday and accused the school's principal of yanking Chante out of class the day after her comments appeared in my column and scolding her for making Western look bad. Here's the denial from Principal Eleanor P. Matthews: "I did not, and I'm not going to address it anymore."

It was the last in a series of forums to find ways to improve Baltimore's juvenile justice system - in other words, get kids to stop killing other kids - and participants broke into groups to come up with ideas. Western High School's Chante Bonner, 16, told the school system's police chief: "We have one officer and she is always in the office or sitting somewhere." On the other side of the auditorium at the University of Maryland's biotech park, Jonathan Hanna, 17, told a top city schools official and the city's top prosecutor that he had stopped showing up at New Era Academy just six months shy of graduation.

State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick announced yesterday that her alma mater, Western High School in Baltimore, is among six Maryland Blue Ribbon Schools this year. Also named were Seventh District Elementary in Baltimore County, Southern High in Anne Arundel County, Hammond Middle in Howard County, Highland Elementary in Montgomery County and Stephen Decatur Middle in Worcester County. The schools were selected based on high achievement, significant improvement or both. They will represent Maryland in the national Blue Ribbon Schools competition.

Jeanne Louise Baer, who taught at Western High School for nearly four decades, died of congestive heart failure Thursday at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. She was 88 and had lived in Pimlico for many years. Born Jeanne Louise Groleau in Monaca, Pa., she earned a teaching degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She later attended the Johns Hopkins University. She moved to Baltimore and joined the Baltimore City Department of Education in 1941 and was a volunteer in the USO - a group whose members entertained military personnel at social gatherings - during World War II. "My mother loved dancing and meeting people," said her daughter, Deborah Baer of Cedarcroft.

Nancy S. Grasmick took perhaps the greatest gamble of her 15-year career as Maryland's schools chief by being the first state superintendent in the nation to seek a takeover under federal law. Critics immediately called her move political, an election-year shot designed to help her ally the governor keep his job. And within two days, she lost her first round in Annapolis when the General Assembly approved a one-year moratorium putting her bold attempt to...

Western High School, Baltimore's prestigious all-girls public high school, has lowered its admissions standards to accept 125 freshmen who would have been rejected in years past, sparking cries of outrage from students and parents clamoring for quality public education in the city. Western has a 100 percent college acceptance rate. Despite that, school system officials say, they had to lower the standards for half of the 250 girls admitted to the school's class of 2010 because they didn't have enough qualified applicants.

Zenobia Martin Kendig, the retired director of vocal music at Western High School and a gardener, died of cancer Tuesday at her Lutherville home. She was 97. Born Zenobia Rockwood in Owatonna, Minn., she was a Northwestern University student when she met her future husband, Joseph Martin, an accountant. When he took a job at the old Western Electric Corp. Point Breeze plant, she left school, and they moved to Baltimore's Mount Washington. Mrs. Martin, who was a pianist, taught music from her Woodcrest Avenue home and led a Girl Scout troop at St. John's Episcopal Church in the 1930s.

The Baltimore school system has named 15 Welch-Tildon Student Ambassadors through a program that recognizes well-rounded high school students. The program is named after two recent chairs of the city school board, Patricia L. Welch and J. Tyson Tildon. The student ambassadors, all high school juniors, were selected based on academics, leadership, character and communication skills. The student ambassadors will represent Baltimore City public schools in various ways throughout their junior year.

The Baltimore school system will host a public forum at 7 p.m. Wednesday for community members to comment on a process under way to close some city schools. The meeting will be held at Polytechnic Institute, 1400 W. Cold Spring Lane. Responding to declining enrollment and deteriorating school buildings, the school board voted this month to reduce its operating space by 2.7 million square feet over the next three years. System officials insist that they do not know which schools they will close to meet that target.

Melva L. Greene, a retired Baltimore City public schools administrator, died of cancer Feb. 6 at the Woodlawn home of a friend where she was receiving medical care. She was 62. Born Melva Lee Powell in Baltimore and raised in West Baltimore, she was a 1960 Western High School graduate and earned an education degree from what is now Towson University and a master's degree from Loyola College in Maryland. She also studied at the University of Maryland, College Park. Mrs. Green retired from Baltimore City public schools in 2002, with 38 years of service as an educator and supervisor.