The Anne
Arundel County Board of Education on Wednesday, September 19th,
approved a plan to increase educational opportunities for
thousands of students when it gave its unanimous backing to an
implementation timeline for magnet and signature programs in
county high schools and middle schools.
Under the
plan, North County High
School will become a
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Magnet High
School next fall. This first STEM
Magnet Program will draw from the North County, Glen Burnie,
Northeast, Chesapeake, Arundel Old Mill and Meade clusters. The
program is expected to enroll its first 100 freshmen later this
year. South River High School
will become the second STEM Magnet High School in the fall of
2009, and Meade
High School will begin a Homeland Security Signature Program the
same year.
"This is not
just a plan to put a few more programs in our schools," school
Superintendent Dr. Kevin M. Maxwell told the Board Wednesday
night. "It is the first major step in our secondary school
reform, and it will forever change the landscape of our high
school and middle school instructional programs."
Magnet
programs draw students from immediate geographic regions within
the county. Signature programs are open to students within a
specific high school. Under the plan approved September 19th,
the International Baccalaureate
(IB) programs
at Meade High
School and Mac Arthur Middle School will be opened to students
in the Arundel, Glen Burnie, Meade and North County clusters
beginning in the fall of 2008. Those programs, two of six IB
sites in the county, are currently open only to Meade Cluster
School students.
The plan also
calls for the IB Middle Years program at Annapolis Middle,
Macarthur Middle, and Old Mill Middle School North to move to a
whole school approach. Beginning Fall 2008, all sixth grade
students at these three middle schools along with the cohort of
IB students moving to seventh grade will all be engage in the IB
Middle Years Program.
Every
comprehensive high school will eventually have a signature
program, and all schools with magnet programs will create
advisory councils to foster collaborative relationships with
business and community groups. Partnerships also are being
created with institutions of higher learning and with Fort
George G. Meade.
Future plans
for the program include STEM programs at Brooklyn Park, Lindale,
Central, and Severna Park Middle schools, a Biomedical-Health
magnet program at Glen Burnie High School, and Performing and
Visual Arts magnet programs at Bates Middle School and Annapolis
High School.
Magnet Applications and Parent Information Nights:
This website
will be updated as new information becomes available. Please
check back HERE in October for rising 9th
grader online
recruitment and application materials for the new STEM Magnet
High School at North County High school. The application process
for current 8th
graders
(rising 9th
graders)
interested in applying to this new STEM Magnet High School
Program will begin in mid October, 2007. The application
deadline is Friday, December 14th,
2007.
Background Readings and Resources
-
Community Resource Mapping, National Center on
Secondary Education and Transition, Volume 2, Issue 1, April
2003
-
Facilitating School and Community Partnerships Across Diverse
Stakeholder Groups, Connexions, Diane Pollard,
2007
-
Launching Our Future Together (Project LOFT): A
Plan for Conducting a Stakeholder-Involved Futures
Planning Process for the Grant Wood Area Education Agency
(Executive Summary), Midwest Center for
Innovation and System Design, Trace Pickering, 2007
Magnet
Program
Models from Around the Country
