Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 3

Free Press telephones City News Desk 222-6600 To Place Want Ads 222-6800 Insurance Dept. 222-6470 For Home Delivery 222-6500 All Other Calls 222-6400 Today's Chudcta Teenager to his father: "But, Dad, I've got to be a non-conformist. How else canlbeliketheother kids?" Section A. Page 3 SECOND FRONT PAGE Sunday, February 25, 1979 eading test tells only pari of tale of two schools Inner city's George Elementary: Birmingham's friendly Midvale: Perfect scores are no surprise Two elementary schools, M'tdvale in Birmingham and George in Detroit, were named last week as the metropolitan area's high and low schools in statewide school reading achievement tests given to fourth grade students. Here is a look at both schools and what teachers and administrators say about their students' scores.

Beating back the desolation outside By JULIE MORRIS Free Press Staff Writer George Elementary School is one of the last structures still standing in a neighborhood of va cant, lots, tumbledown houses and dead-end streets. A decade of urban renewal left the two-story, SAaSv tit red-brick school standing incongruously alone on seven blocks of open land in an almost forgotten corner of Detroit at Russell and Alexandrine, 10 minutes north of downtown. INSIDE, THE SCHOOL is filled with richly colored wall murals, decorative ceiling hangings and bustling activities, orchestrated by a staff proud of its achievements in beating back the desolation outside the front door. 4, 'i A- -J, The 187 students at George, all black and one- its mascot and sells "Midvale" sweatshirts to build school spirit, is heavily into back-to-the-basics education. Nine crassroom teachers have their students for all subjects, except gym and music, in a system referred to as the self-contained classroom.

The big, many-windowed classrooms in the 21-year-old building are casually cluttered with a science project here, a social studies display there. Midvale students and staff practice the increasingly popular "quiet reading" program. For half an hour, one day a week, everyone in the building sits down with some reading of his or her own choice. The school's carpeted and often crowded media center holds 11,596 books, plus magazines and audio-visual equipment children use to make their own slides and filmstrips. Dr.

Velma Ruhly, Midvale's principal, said she was pleased but not surprised when her 29 fourth grade students made the only perfect score of any metropolitan area school on state reading achievement tests. All 29 passed both the reading and the math test given last fall. "What the students showed (on the tests) was really a product of four years' teaching here," Dr. Ruhly said. "Like I told someone else, I wish we had a breakthrough, but that's not what it was.

It was excellent teachers, fine kids and co-operative, involved parents." Midvale's fourth graders were split into SeeMiDVALE, PageGA Thomadsen, said her staff "stresses ego building." Students and teachers worry as much about the students' home situations as about what they learn in school. One classroom at George serves as a repository for donated used clothing for students who need it. Because attendance at school parent meetings averages only about 10 people each month, a group of parents and administrators went door-to-door this year to meet the families of every student. Until this year, the major special academic program at George was a mathematics laboratory, established by a young Wayne State University graduate hired with federal funds. Now in its third year, the math program stresses individual attention and learning through experiences such as playing the stock market, shopping at a supermarket and establishment of a mythical society in the classroom.

The math lab paid off. Twelve of George's 16 fourth graders passed the state math achievement test, giving the school one of the highest class scores in the Detroit system. IN READING, the story at George was the exact opposite. Only two of the same fourth graders passed the reading test, which is designed to measure knowledge of definitions, alphabetizing and comprehension. Last year as third graders, the same George group studied reading under a teacher with 29 years' experience and a master's degree.

They used the same reading text, the Ginn series, as half the See GEORGE, Page 8A By JULIE MORRIS Free Press Staff Writer The big deal at Midvale Elementary School last week was the hot dog lunch. Half of Midvale's 250 students normally walk home for lunch, but last Tuesday most stayed for the special 75-cent hot dog, potato chips and Twinkie lunch prepared by volunteer parents raising PTA funds. MIDVALE IS known in Birmingham as a topflight neighborhood school. Named for Midvale Street, where it's located, the school serves an area of gracious brick colonial homes. The families not only send their children to Midvale but also seem to think of the school as a friend.

More than 100 Midvale mothers volunteer regularly to aid the teachers and staff. Parent committees include one that raises funds for and maintains school grounds and another that finds and pays for cultural programs for students. Among 1 1 such programs this year was a performance of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra string quartet. "This school is always willing to let parents come in," said one parent, Judy Anderson. "That's not true of all schools.

This one is something different." All but two of Midvale's students are white and they come from middle-upper to upper-class homes where, as one mother put it, "they keep the encyclopedias in the living room." THE SCHOOL, which chose the raccoon as third from families with incomes below poverty level, are offered a variety of free programs, most federally funded, that many Detroit schools don't have. These include breakfast and lunch at school, i- i daily after-school supervised recreation and music, art, theater and dance training. Ten teachers and two specialists work with the children in the 69-year-old building, where wooden classroom floors are worn to the grain and the furniture shows long use. George functions on an open class system. The children have a homeroom, but change classrooms and teachers for each 50-minute period (which does not include library time because the school has not had a librarian since a budget cut several years ago; the Detroit Public Library bookmobile comes to the school once a week for a day).

Free Press Photo bv HUGH GRANNUAA Mary Outlaw of George Elementary School helps Kenneth Boyer with a reading problem. THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR, Rose Marie i icie Monsie: Village forgives an old timer for killing tormentor Hi 1 wallows Van: i By ERIC SHARP Free Press Staff Writer It Pothole Season MUNITH, Mich. There wasn't any question that Mexican Frank Rodriguez killed Preston Smith last May during an argument outside the shack they shared. 1 "9 IT WAS 6:30 a.m. before they decided to go home for-, some sleep and make another towing attempt later in the-' 4 day.

1 'A Yet another Detroit police, car was waiting by Dudek's van when he showed up about By ERIC SHARP Free Press Staff Writer A seven-foot-deep chuck-hole, which residents of a west side Detroit neighborhood say appears almost annually, made its 1979 debut Saturday by trying to swallow Theodore Dudek's van. Dudek left his wife and another couple at Stromboli's Restaurant at the corner of Warren and Grandville about 1:30 a.m. while he got the 1977 Chevrolet Beauville van. He had no trouble drivine noon Saturday with 'a wrecker from Shelton's Tow ing Service, which specializes wheel was still where it was supposed to be it just wasn't touching the ground, which fell seven feet out from under it. Dudek said he called help and eventually two Detroit police cars and a state trooper were on the scene.

But three private towing companies refused to attempt the extrication for fear of damaging the van, Dudek said, and two city trucks that tried only stretched his rear bumper. "The people in Stromboli's couldn't have been nicer. They stayed open after their normal closing so we'd have a place to stay warm while waiting for the wreckers, and they gave us coffee." '1 in heavy jobs. The operator hooked a chain from the big hydraulic. Three witnesses who heard the shouting were standing within 15 feet of the two old men when Rodriguez pulled the trigger.

And when Henrietta Township Police Chief Delbert Hutch-ings got up from his knees after confirming that Smith was dead, old Francisco Rodriguez was the first to say he was responsible. SO THE PROBLEM facing the police, prosecutor and courts was not finding out who did it. It was trying to decide what to do with a 74-year-old man who kills another man who cheated and tormented him for many years. That question also bothered some townsfolk who had known Francisco Rodriguez for many years and who figured that at his age he should be allowed one mistake even one as drastic as a killing. So 29 of those people, many prominent citizens in this village of about 1,000 souls, got up a petition asking Jackson County Circuit Judge Gordon W.

Britten to consider mitigating circumstances and send Francisco Rodriguez home. Mexican Frank is on probation now, back at his shack on Coon Hill Road. He's grateful to the folks who ended his nine-month stint in Jackson County Jail and waiting quietly for business to pick up so he can go back to his job sorting onions at Lacerne Dixon farm and packaging plant. BUT WHILE MOST TOWNSPEOPLE interviewed recently boom on the back of his truck i fr to the front axle of Dudek's" into the alley behind John 1. van, then carefully lifted the van out of the hole and swung Tencza home appliance the front to solid ground.

store to turn the van around. But as he swung back onto Dudek was able to drive to Grandville a hole nearly six See VAN, Page12A feet in diameter opened up where the alley meets the street, and the van dropped to a crunching halt on its front bumper, he said. if i said they thought the old man should be free and was unlikely to kill again, one faction within the community says he is a Police station hit by sniper bullets "I THOUGHT the wheel 1 had come off," said Dudek, 39, It. Sjj. a U.S.

Postal Service supervisor who lives in nearby Red-ford Township. "I got thrown i Detroit police late Saturday cordoned off a puotic menace who should be sent to prison. Rodriguez was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the May 28 slaying of Smith, a Kentucky native and longtime Jackson County resident whose death elicits little concern or compassion. "Lazy" and "bum" were among the more charitable epithets used to describe him. Townsfolk say Smith, and sometimes some of his half-See KILLING, Page23A forward against the steering wheel and everything inside area around the Sixth (McGraw) Precinct after a sniper fired came flying forward." three shots into the precinct station.

There were no injuries, police said. Free Press Photo By LONA O'CONNOR Francisco Rodriguez, 74, who is out of jail and waiting at his home on Coon Hill Road to go back to work sorting onions. He crawled out of the van "It's possible we have a sniper," said precinct commander to discover that the left front Philip Arreola. Members of the police tactical services section and other police blocked off an area south of the precinct, late endangered elk which is at 6840 McGraw. Sold! Auctioneer ivins laughs at Arreola said police think the shots were fired from 1 I u4 Munger Junior High School, or an athletic field by the finally get legal break school, which is part of the ae West sale Chadsey High School com plex at 5335 Martin, directly 9 -w? south of the precinct.

Lt. Thurman Page, the of 4 ficer in charge of the night shift at the precinct, said an anonymous caller telephoned the precinct shortly after the shots were fired at 10:10 p.m. "Don't come over to Chad sey. We have lots of ammunition and are prepared to spend the night," Page said the caller told police. By HUGH McDIARMID Lansins Bureau Chief LANSING Elk, not oil, won last week in the state Supreme Court's somewhat unexpected decision to ban exploratory drilling in the Pigeon River Country State Forest.

For the elk, it was a refreshing change. In the past, Michigan has not been kind to its elk. In fact, it literally wiped them out around the turn of the century. Lumber barons cut down their forests, fires ravaged their range and hungry settlers hunted them for food. The combination was too much, so the skittish elk that once flourished freely throughout the Lower Peninsula simply disappeared.

THE THRUST of last week's Supreme Court decision was that elk in Michigan should not be wiped out again. The court ordered a permanent ban on drilling at 10 exploratory well sites in the Pigeon River Forest, a semiwild-erness which is the heart of Michigan's present elk range. The court cited the potential Lights were turned off in the station house, which is located in the city's near west mineral leases in the oil-rich southern third of the forest. Or it may preserve intact the forest's pristine qualities for centuries to come. But from the standpoint of Michigan's elk herd the only such herd of significance east of the Mississippi River the decision was wholly favorable.

The written opinion made little or no mention of bear or bobcat, streams or swamps, wildflowers or berries or osprey and eagle all parts of the overall grandeur of the Pigeon River country which environmentalists, who brought the suit, tried so hard to document during trial. Instead, the court singled out elk only the elk. NOT BAD for a bunch of immigrants. That's right. Michigan's elk herd is not native to the state.

The distinction is a fine one and some experts say the hair-splitting may not be worth it, but the Michigan herd, which numbers about 300 animals by latest count, is descended from the Rocky Mountain elk, not the native Eastern elk. Richard J. Moran, a wildlife biologist for See ELK, Page 23A By JENNIFER HOLMES Free Press Staff Writer For the crowd at the Mae West auction Saturday afternoon at the C.B. Charles Galleries in Pontiac, the auctioneer was a gas. "For how many of you is this your very first auction?" asked Charles, the auctioneer, of the more than 500 people who came from as far as Denver and New York.

"Oh, that many? "And how many of you have been to about five auctions in your life? I see. about half of you and how many of you are attending your LAST auction?" The standing-room-only crowd included everybody from potbellied types in sweatshirts to swanky ladies wearing tinted spectacles low on their uptilted noses. CHARLES, WHO SPEAKS in a friendly growl, first taught the audience how to bid visually, showing them the hand signals for "quarter bid" and "hop." Then he told them how to pay: "This may come as a shock, but we DO accept cash and Visa and Master Charge and a personal check." The first item was a cut-glass dinner bell, which Charles turned upside down and renamed a "portable martini glass with its own little stirrer." "Going ONCE, going TWICE. For twenty-seven and a hahhhhhhhhhf." Charles and his crew bought the contents of Mae West's See AUCTION, Page 23A side. Page said the bullets smashed through a window in the front of the station when faces south on McGraw.

Police began searching both schools at about 12:30 'iiiir'ni 4Lk, Free Press Photo bv PATRICIA BECK a.m. Sunday. Several side streets lead ing to the school and the station were blocked, as were Auctioneer C.B. Charles holds up a vase from the Mae West collection. "This may come as a shock," he told the bidders, "but we DO accept cash impairment or damage to a valuable Michigan natural resource the elk.

The opinion's full impact is unclear. It may prove only a temporary setback to oil companies' determined effort to exercise decade-old overpasses on 1-94, which is about one-half mile south of the station. i.