Montgomery Blair High School

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Montgomery Blair High School (most often simply known as Blair) is a public high school located in unincorporated Silver Spring in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The school was named after Montgomery Blair, a lawyer who represented Dred Scott in his United States Supreme Court case and who served as Postmaster General under President Abraham Lincoln.^[1] It originally opened in 1925 as Takoma Park-Silver Spring High School. In 1935, however, Montgomery Blair High School opened at 313 Wayne Avenue, a location overlooking Sligo Creek, now occupied by Silver Spring International Middle School. In 1998, the campus moved two miles (3 km) north to the Kay Tract, a long-vacant tract of land adjacent to the Capital Beltway.

The school is notable for its magnet program and Communication Arts Program (CAP), which draw students from both the Silver Spring area and across Montgomery County, and make up approximately 20% of Blair's student population. The school has won a plethora of awards, particularly in math, science, computer science, and journalism. It is a member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology (NCSSSMST), although unlike other member schools, only a small percentage of the school's population is enrolled in the specialized programs. Blair perennially has a significant number of semifinalists and finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search.

[edit] History

Montgomery Blair High School, then known as Takoma-Silver Spring High School, became the first high school to serve Silver Spring, Maryland when it opened in 1925. By the end of the 1920s the school had expanded to host students in eighth and ninth grades, who attended the school's junior high school, as well as tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades, who attended the school's senior high school. By 1934, the school was over-capacity with a total enrollment of 450 students, and so, in September 1935, the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades relocated to a new high school named Montgomery Blair Senior High School. Montgomery Blair High School remained at that location for over six decades until its 1998 move to its current location near the intersection of University Boulevard, Colesville Road, and the Capital Beltway.

U.S. President George W. Bush and Blair alumnus Ben Stein ('62) attend a political event held at Blair.

Nevertheless, the auditorium at the former Blair building has received a significant amount of attention throughout the region as it has fallen into disrepair. Several local politicians and leaders, including former Maryland state senator Ida Ruben and U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, have endorsed projects to restore the auditorium to its former condition.^[2]

[edit] Notable events

In 1992, Blair became the first high school to host sections of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.^{[citation needed]} It has been a popular stop for many politicians because of the school's diversity. On February 5, 1998, President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair stopped at Montgomery Blair High School during a state visit.^[3] Montgomery Blair has also welcomed other government officials in recent years, including United States Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and Secretary of Education Rod Paige during a visit in 2003. On June 23, 2005, President George W. Bush visited the school in order to discuss his plan to partially privatize Social Security. Students were not permitted to attend. Bush's presence at the school drew approximately 400 protesters, who, despite the last-minute announcement of the visit, questioned both his proposed policies and the fact that this town hall-style meeting was not open to the general public. Members of the organization "Progressive Maryland" were present at the protest; however, it became immediately evident after the protest had gotten underway that they were unwilling to participate in such a provocative protest,^{[citation needed]} although they had helped to promote it.

Events occurring at the school and students attending the school have been featured several times in The Washington Post. In late 2006, the Post picked up a story about the controversial new ID policy, making the front page of the Metro section.

[edit] Campus

The current campus of Montgomery Blair High School covers forty-two acres between the Capital Beltway, U.S. Route 29, and Maryland Route 193 in Silver Spring's Four Corners neighborhood. As such, the school's campus is approximately triangular with the side bordered by the Capital Beltway being the longest. The school contains 386,567 ft² of space and was originally designed for 2,830 students.^[4] Only eight school years after its completion, the school was more than 500 students over capacity. As a result, the school at one point had eight auxiliary portable classrooms. Over the past few years, population has decreased slightly due to the opening of other schools and the Downcounty Consortium, and as a result 2 portables were removed at the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year. As of April 2008, the enrollment at Blair is 2,764, and the portable classrooms have been removed. Still, Blair remains the county's largest school.

A sundial added to the school's courtyard in March 2006

The school has baseball and softball fields to the east of the main school building as well as Blazer Stadium which serves as the home of the school's football, soccer, and lacrosse. A large field resides south of the main building adjacent to the Capital Beltway. To the southwest of the building is a 400-meter track, which encloses another field, home to the field hockey team, as well as three basketball and eight tennis courts. The school has two parking lots, one reserved for students and another reserved for both faculty members and visitors. There are three courtyards located throughout the building; one is located to the east of the building and opens out to the rest of the outdoor space. The other two courtyards are located within the school building and therefore are surrounded by walls on all four sides. Traditionally, one of the courtyards is reserved for the seniors and another one for the faculty members, especially during lunch periods. A small greenhouse and accompanying patio is located on the second floor on the west side of the main building for use by horticulture classes. One of Montgomery Blair's most recent additions came in March 2006, when the school's astronomy class added a sundial to the east courtyard.

The school building contains a 750-seat auditorium, but it has not received as much acclaim from the community as the smaller, aged auditorium at Blair's old location. The school also has standard classrooms and academic facilities. However, instead of a typical cafeteria, Blair has a Student Activities Center (SAC) which serves as the lunchroom as well as a main site of Blair events. Connecting the auditorium and SAC, which are on two ends of the building, is a large, unique, three-story corridor entitled Blair Boulevard. Another hallway is named after Sligo Creek because it snakes through the building, much like its namesake. All other hallways in the building are given similar street names, but are seldom referred to as such, because they are also numbered by level.

Perhaps one of the building's most unusual features is its vibrant color scheme, which include various shades of red and green throughout the school. The SAC contains numerous shades as well as a mural depicting the campus. The ceiling of Blair Boulevard is not a standard white, but "cilantro" or "poseidon" according to the administration. The front wall of each classroom is painted in a light color while the other walls are white. According to staff, the school's designers came up with its color scheme based on research on how directed color affected learning.

[edit] Demographics

As of 2007, the school had the largest enrollment in the Montgomery County school district: 2,764. Blair is notable for the diversity of its student body: Blacks make up 29.8% of the population, Whites 25.5%, Hispanics 26.9% and Asians 17.7%. [1] Because of its proximity to Washington, DC, its large, diverse population, and the numerous awards it has won, Montgomery Blair High School has hosted heads of state and other dignitaries over the years.

[edit] Academics

Because of its Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Program and its Communication Arts Program, Blair attracts students from across the entire county. The school is one of the few US high schools to have a .edu domain name, with its internet connection having gone live in the late 1980s. The school is also home to the award winning print newspaper Silver Chips and online newspaper Silver Chips Online. Additionally, Blair has a student television and radio production unit known as Blair Network Communications (BNC). BNC produces a daily announcement program called InfoFlow which airs on school televisions in the morning. Blair is also home to "Silver Quill", the award-winning literary arts magazine which is designed by students and features student artwork and literature. "Silver Quill" is distributed with the school yearbook at the end of the school year.

Most of the school's approximately 2,950 students reside in nearby areas of Silver Spring. Several hundred other students are brought by bus from throughout Montgomery County. The specialized programs, which were initially created as a single desegregation program, account for about 800 students within the school.

Blair has an It's Academic team, which won the championship in 1995.

[edit] Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Program

One of two computer labs used most often by students in the Magnet Program

In 1985, Montgomery County Public Schools opened its first Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Program within Montgomery Blair High School. The Magnet Program, often called the magnet, offers accelerated, interdisciplinary courses in science, mathematics, and computer science for students particularly interested in these subjects. The current coordinator of the Magnet Program is Dennis Heidler. Heidler holds the title after the retirement of long-time Magnet teacher and coordinator Eileen Steinkraus. Despite the racial, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity in the Blair student body as a whole, the Magnet Program remains mostly composed of students who are white and Asian-American.^[5]

At the start of second semester in 8th grade, students who reside in Montgomery County are eligible to apply to the Magnet Program. The application process involves a written application including essays, teacher recommendations, and middle school transcripts. All applicants are required to take a written exam in the spring on math, science, humanities, and logical thinking. The program accepts only 100 students from across the county and students can only enter the program in 9th grade. In recent years, the number of applicants has reached record highs in the 700-800 students range. For the class entering in the fall of 2007, there were 380 students evaluated. It, along with the recently opened Magnet Program at Poolesville High School, and the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, MD are the only countywide magnet programs at the high-school level in MCPS.

Since Magnet students have extra academic requirements, they have an additional class at the end of their school days (eight periods instead of the usual seven), which causes the Magnet students to end school 50 minutes later than most other county high-schoolers. Ninth and tenth grade Magnet students take four courses each semester within the Magnet curriculum—science, mathematics, research & experimentation (R&E), and computer science—and four courses each semester in other disciplines (English, fine arts, foreign language, physical education, social studies, etc.) with the rest of the Blair student body. Freshmen in the Magnet take accelerated honors-level physics first semester and chemistry second semester; sophomores take Earth System Science followed by biology. In addition to science courses, freshmen in the Magnet are required to take fundamentals of computer science and sophomores are required to take Algorithms and Data Structures (ADS) where they learn how to program in Java. Freshmen who pass a certain test are allowed to start ADS one semester early. Juniors and seniors have fewer required Magnet courses, and therefore complete their schedules with magnet electives, AP science classes, or other departments' electives. Some examples of unique elective classes offered in the Magnet Program are quantum physics, thermodynamics, linear algebra, discrete mathematics, multi-variable calculus with differential equations, complex analysis with applications, genetics, cell physiology, marine biology, material science, astronomy, origins of science, and origins of mathematics. Blair students not in the Magnet Program can and do enroll in Magnet classes.

One of the main components of the Magnet Program is the Senior Research Project (SRP). While not strictly required, completing an SRP is strongly encouraged, and about 90 out of the 100 students choose to do so. Beginning in the spring of junior year, the students complete independent, original study on topics of their choice in the sciences or the social sciences. Usually, the project will involve an internship of at least eight weeks in length at one of the many research institutions in and around Montgomery County, Maryland, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the University of Maryland, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Carnegie Institute. After completing their research, students write formal scientific papers and present their projects at the Magnet Research Convention, which takes place each year in early spring.

Magnet students have been winners of National Science Bowl, National Merit semi-finalists, Montgomery County Science Fair Grand Award Winners, first place winners in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, Montgomery County Mathematics League champions 19 straight years, SuperQuest finalist teams, national winners in the NASA Space Science Student Involvement Project, American Computer Science League National Championship Teams, Grand Winner of the Physics Olympics for the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan Area, and first place winners in the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium.^{[citation needed]} The Magnet Program has also had more semi-finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search than any other school in Maryland for nine years running, and the most nationally for two of the past three years, despite an enrollment of only around 100 per year. Prior to the SAT changes, SAT scores consistently fell above 1400.^{[citation needed]} The average SAT score for the Magnet program consistently falls above 2100.^{[citation needed]}

The program now boasts alumni who are math and science professors and researchers at institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard College, New York University, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Some alumni have even returned to the program to teach.^[6] In recent years, the program has seen the children of some of the first students who graduated through the program.

Two asteroids, 16234 Bosse and 16241 Dvorsky, were named in honor of Magnet teachers Angie Bosse and Mary Ann Dvorsky for mentoring finalists in the 2002 Intel Science Talent Search.

Each year, a number of students in the Magnet program produce the annual magazine, Silver Quest.

[edit] Communication Arts Program

The Communication Arts Program (CAP) at Montgomery Blair High School was established in 1988, three years after the Math, Science and Computer Science Magnet Program opened. The program strives to provide a comprehensive approach to the humanities and the media by offering accelerated, interdisciplinary courses in English, social studies, and media production for participating students. The CAP also places a great deal of importance on social awareness and community service.

Currently, in ninth grade, students take a photography class, a drama class, an American history course and English. The tenth grade classes are journalism, media,AP government/NSL and English. In eleventh grade, students take AP World History, AP English Language and Composition and one semester of Research Methods. Student need to take a portfolio prep class in the last semester of their junior and first semester of their senior year.

The CAP attracts highly able students from all around the county. Admission to the program, like the Magnet, is highly selective. Students may be eligible to join the CAP if they are a member of the Downcounty Consortium of high schools, or were a member of middle school magnet programs at Eastern Middle School or Takoma Park Middle School. Applicants must have a B average or better in honors-level English and Social Studies courses. The CAP admits approximately 75 students every year, but very few students are admitted to the program after the first semester of freshman year. Once admitted to the program, students are required to successfully complete the twelve CAP courses, maintain a minimum 2.75 GPA, and complete the CAP Portfolio to graduate with the CAP certificate.

The CAP Portfolio is, essentially, the final, defining, and most important project of the CAP experience - assembled in junior and senior years, students choose all of their best work in a variety of categories (writing skills, media literacy skills and creative skills among others) completed for classes that are a part of the program's curriculum. After students have put together their Portfolio to the satisfaction of CAP faculty members, they undergo interviews on their contents - failure to put together a Portfolio or failure of the interview process will result in removal from the program.

[edit] BEN

BEN (The Blair Educational Network) was a Web-based gradebook and groupware program used by students and teachers to keep track of assignments, upcoming events such as quizzes and tests, and as file and email servers. On BEN, each teacher could upload files and assign homework and create discussion forums. Parents could log on [2] and access their children's schedules, including upcoming/current assignments as well as tests (if the teacher posted such). However, unlike the now popularized Edline, parents could not access grades. BEN also included functions such as school email, a small storage unit along with access to teachers and other students. The software behind BEN, known as AUC, was developed in-house by students and staff beginning in 1998. Versions of AUC were released as open source from 1999 through 2001 and the system was adopted by a number of other schools around the world.

On June 15, 2007, BEN was shut down to make way for Edline, an online service for schools across the country. Many students and teachers attending the school opposed this change due to BEN's uniqueness, user-friendly format and familiarity among Blair staff and students. Furthermore, Edline does not offer the full range of services BEN had, so BILL (Blair Information & Learning Locus) was released to provide services formerly found on the now-defunct BEN. BILL has significantly improved on the email services formerly found on BEN, but the remaining features remain, generally speaking, constant.

[edit] Entrepreneurship Program

Montgomery Blair's Entrepreneurship program is one of the only high school entrepreneurship programs in the region. Originally started by Blair teacher Derek Sontz the program has grown and is now supervised by academy head Kevin Murley who also teaches Entrepreneurship with Sontz. The Entrepreneurship Academy works on students' financial literacy and knowledge of investment strategies, as well as on their general business skills. Students can take one of three strands in the Academy (accounting, business management, and entrepreneurship).^[7]

[edit] Notable alumni

Notable alumni of Blair include:

• Steve Barber, pitcher for the Major League Baseball team Baltimore Orioles in the 1960s
• Carl Bernstein, journalist who helped break the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post
• Tom Brown, player for National Football League teams the Green Bay Packers and Washington Redskins and for Major League Baseball's Washington Senators
• Kiran Chetry, journalist, CNN Anchor
• Connie Chung, broadcast journalist
• Dominique Dawes, Olympic Gymnast (transferred to Gaithersburg High School)
• Steve Francis, National Basketball Association player with the Houston Rockets
• Howard Gobioff, Principal Engineer, Google
• Stan Greenberg, pollster for U.S. president Bill Clinton and others
• Goldie Hawn, actress
• Wei-Hwa Huang, member of the US Team for the World Puzzle Federation
• Eric Hutchinson, Singer-songwriter
• Niels Hoven, Beauty and the Geek (season 3)
• Rick Leventhal, broadcast journalist, Correspondent, Fox News Channel
• Bob Long, Vice President, NBC
• Tom Marr, Former Baltimore Orioles radio broadcaster, and longtime radio talk show host on Baltimore's WCBM(680-AM)
• Sonny Jackson, professional baseball player
• Ananth Panagariya, writer for web comic AppleGeeks
• Chuck Redd, jazz percussionist who played with Charlie Byrd, Barney Kessel, Dizzy Gillespie, Mel Tormé and Ken Peplowski
• Barry Richards, Disc Jockey, WHMC, Host of Groove-in on Television
• Craig L. Rice, Member of Maryland House of Delegates, (District 15)
• Nora Roberts, romance novelist
• Ralph Segal, Broadcaster & Traffic Reporter for WTOP Radio. Musician - The Diversions, Rhythm Masters, Johnny and The Headhunters, The Torpedoes and others
• Eric Shansby, The Washington Post cartoonist
• Visanthe Shiancoe, backup tight end for the NFL team the Minnesota Vikings
• Norman Solomon, journalist
• Ben Stein, economist; actor; speech writer for U.S. President Richard Nixon
• David Vanterpool, National Basketball Association player
• Willis Wilson, head men's basketball coach at Rice University
• Bob Windsor, player for National Football League teams the San Francisco 49ers and New England Patriots

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Montgomery Blair High School
• Communication Arts Program
• Science, Math, Computer Science Magnet
• Blair Network Communications (school television station)
• Silver Chips Online (online school newspaper)
• Blair Student Government Association