Field Trips

A former administrator at Camden's H.B. Wilson Elementary School pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring to steal more than $14,000 that was supposed to pay for student field trips. Patricia Johnson, 58, of Atco, also admitted to trying to bill the school board $25,000 for attending meetings that never took place. She faces three to five years in prison at her sentencing on Sept. 22, and she has agreed to testify against three codefendants in the case, the state Attorney General's Office said.

In a snug apartment 16 floors above Center City last week, the initiation of three rookie City Council members was nearing its final days. Their host, in a black beret and turtleneck, was a 6-foot-3-inch whirlwind named Thomas Henry Massaro, the drill sergeant of an eight-month boot camp to school the uninitiated in the workings of the $6 billion operation they would be overseeing. His program: More than 150 speakers and 300 hours worth of seminars and field trips - some to the hospital room he often occupied as he fought off a debilitating illness over the last months.

Four years ago, 21 eighth graders at Kennett Middle School signed up for Bridge to Employment, a four-year program run by Centocor Inc. and West Chester University designed to better prepare them for life after high school through a wide array of activities and field trips. On May 24, the 15 remaining students (trimmed by a few dropouts and relocations) gathered with their mentors from Centocor at Challie's Famous Grille in Kennett Square to celebrate their graduation, and recount the places they've seen and things they've done through their four years in the Bridge program.

Struggling parents at H.B. Wilson Elementary School in Camden were charged for photos of their children with Santa and the Easter Bunny and were required to pay for a spring carnival even though district money had been set aside for those activities, school personnel say they have told a state grand jury. The employees do not know what became of the money that parents paid during the 2005-06 school year for the photos and carnival. But they said they had told the grand jury that they did not believe it had been properly accounted for and feared the parents had been bilked out of thousands more dollars.

The setting is middle school. The cast has that middle-school look, even if a little too well-scrubbed. And the target audience for two new prime-time movies that Nickelodeon is offering tonight and tomorrow night is middle school all the way. Both films have that blend of silliness and sophistication that tweens love, their older sibs loathe and their younger brothers and sisters don't quite get. They portray adults - with one...

Four former Camden school employees, charged in the first case stemming from a criminal probe into the district, pleaded not guilty yesterday to stealing student field-trip money and submitting phony pay vouchers. They were arraigned before Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Holden in Camden at a brief hearing and released on their own recognizance. Their attorneys declined comment. In the most serious allegations, a 10-count indictment returned by a state grand jury in March alleges that Michael Hailey, a former H.B. Wilson Elementary School principal, and his top assistant, Patricia Johnson, stole $14,298 in field-trip money paid by students.

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A group of Camden parents who claim that they were swindled out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for field trips that were already financed by the Camden School District has sued the district to recoup their money. In a civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday in New Jersey Superior Court in Camden, the H.B. Wilson Elementary School parents allege that the Camden School District "illegally, unethically and immorally seized" vast sums of money from them. During a 17-year period, parents paid an estimated $583,000 for trips, according to the lawsuit.

The succession of articles about the Camden School District's problems is enough to make anyone sick. Possible cheating on tests, the suspicious firing of a whistle-blowing principal, unjustified cash bonuses for the superintendent - the list is even more disheartening to alumni of Camden schools, who include me. It has been almost 50 years, but I can still recall walking to Cramer Elementary in East Camden with my friends. I can still remember most of my teachers, still visualize the desks and blackboards.

The New Jersey Attorney General's Office has served a subpoena on the Camden School District as part of a wide-ranging criminal probe into the district and its superintendent, Annette D. Knox. Knox has come under fire for bonuses she received without board knowledge or approval and for accusations that an administrator tried to rig a state test. The subpoena, issued Wednesday, seeks financial and other records dating to 2001, when Knox took office, according to three sources familiar with its contents.