It's 5 p.m. on March 1, 30 minutes into Marie Davis's Night School Physical Science class, and students are still filing in. The newest arrival barges in with his headphones blaring. Davis beckons him to the front of the room, hands him the worksheet that the students have been working on since the beginning of class and directs him to his seat. She doesn't mark him late.
Every day, 200,000 cars sit idly in the 64-mile-long parking lot that is the Washington Capital Beltway. This spring, Maryland transit authorities will hold public forums to pitch their latest solution: toll lanes running in either direction around almost the entire Beltway.
When the new Blair building first opened in 1998, ridiculous rumors about the high school flew around the county. It was the biggest high school in the U.S. It had a swimming pool. And a McDonald's was stationed right inside the school.
Two deaths occur at MCPS football games Kanisha Neal, a Rockville freshman, was stabbed at a James H. Blake football game by a 15-year-old Sherwood student on Sept. 23. The incident was the second fatality in one week at an MCPS football game, according to "The Washington Post." Stephone Wiggins, a 23-year-old Germantown resident, died of injuries received on Sept. 16, when he was beaten with a baseball bat at a football game between Seneca Valley and Northwest. In response to the deaths, MCPS is considering adding more security guards and police officers to supervise football games.
Blair's incoming freshman class will have 87 fewer students than this year's class as a result of the completion of the first round of the selection process for the five Downcounty Consortium schools. This year, more eighth graders were denied their first choice of school, meaning that fewer students will attend Blair next year, according to Academy Coordinator Sundra Mann.
All plumbing fixtures in elementary schools will be replaced by July of 2005 as a result of the Montgomery County Council's allocation of $1.6 million to reduce lead levels in MCPS drinking water. Middle- and high-school plumbing fixtures will be replaced by July of 2006.
Admissions of black students to the three Magnet middle schools have doubled due to MCPS efforts over the last three years, according to MCPS Director of Enriched and Innovative Instruction Virginia Tucker. The acceptance figures have been released amid protests by the African American Parents of Magnet School Applicants (AAPMSA) that too few black students are being accepted into Magnet programs.
In January, a group of black parents called the African-American Parents of Magnet School Applicants (AAPMSA) began researching the application process to the Takoma Park, Eastern and Roberto Clemente Middle School Magnet programs. After meeting with various members of MCPS, AAPMSA sent a memorandum to the Board of Education on March 2 requesting that the Board suspend the Magnet application process because too few blacks were being admitted to the programs.
The Maryland Public Interest Research Group (MaryPIRG) held a press conference at Blair on Feb. 14 to encourage Maryland to adopt more stringent vehicle emission standards. MaryPIRG released the statement at Blair because of the significant effects that the new standards could have on the area: Due to the school's location, students at Blair are subject to the emissions of nearly half a million cars that pass the school each day. "We have some of the worst air quality in the nation," said MaryPIRG director Brad Heavner. "In five of the past six years, Maryland has been among the top 10 states in worst air pollution."
In the latest of a series of state and local initiatives intended to increase driving safety, MCPS and the American Automobile Association held the first of four Drive to Survive classes at Blair on Feb. 23.
During his Modern World History final exam last year, Mike, a senior, came to a difficult question. After mulling it over and failing to come up with the right answer, he decided to turn to text-messaging. Quietly, Mike put his head down on his desk and pretended to sleep while texting his friend the question under his desk. The friend texted the answer back to Mike, who quickly bubbled it in " all without the teacher noticing.
Police arrested and charged a 37-year-old man on Monday, Jan. 17 for the recent spree of burglaries and sexual assaults near Blair and for other crimes dating back to two years ago, according to a Jan. 19 article in The Washington Post.
The sad truth about campaign finance reform is that it neither regulates nor monitors campaign finance. President George W. Bush became the first president in history to waive all public funding for his campaign in 2000, and Senator John Kerry followed suit this year, reflecting a growing trend of presidential candidates choosing private, unregulated money to satisfy their own needs. This creates a two-party system that effectively nullifies third parties and reduces a democratic election to meaningless banter.
Silver Chips won the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA) Newspaper Pacemaker Award for its 2003-2004 issues on Nov. 20 at the NSPA Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, becoming the first newspaper in history to win both the Newspaper Pacemaker and the Online Pacemaker in the same year.
Silver Chips won the National Student Press Association (NSPA) Newspaper Pacemaker Award for its 2003-2004 issues on Nov. 20 at the NSPA Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Atlanta, GA. Chips also won fourth place in the NSPA's "Best of Show" competition for the alumni magazine, Golden Chips.
The homecoming football game will take place tomorrow, Oct. 8, two weeks earlier than last year's game, which was on Oct. 24. Blair's varsity football team will take on Wheaton at 6:30 p.m., and the game will be followed by the Homecoming Dance on Oct. 9 from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.
Blair has experienced difficulties in implementing MCPS's Technology Modernization Program (TechMod), an initiative to keep technology current in County schools, partially due to a lack of user support specialists to oversee the installation of a new computer system at Blair, said faculty members. This was Blair's first installment of new equipment as part of the program.
Slap together a star-studded cast and an excellent soundtrack with a plot that goes nowhere and you get disaster. Or, more accurately, you get Shark Tale.