Reform School

Welcome to Pridemore Girls Reformatory, a workhouse that looks like the Maidenform Home for Wayward Girls. Regulation underwear includes lacy bikini briefs, filmy camisoles and black leather push-up brassieres. When inmates are assigned to hoe the fields, they shimmy into blue work shirts that they leave rakishly unbuttoned. Trashily enjoyable at the outset, Reform School Girls loses its caged heat quicker than a troublemaker loses her mess-hall privileges. Writer/director Tom DeSimone isn't sure whether he wants to make an exploitation movie or a socially conscious picture.

The Goode administration has agreed to increase its contract to the De la Salle Treatment Center for delinquent youths despite complaints by City Council members that similar agencies are not getting the same financial consideration. Officials from De la Salle, a vocational school in Bensalem Township, Bucks County, run by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said the school would have to close if the $41-a-day per-pupil fee the city pays is not increased by 9 percent. At a meeting of City Council's Appropriations Committee yesterday, Daniel Rakowski, a budget analyst in the city Department of Human Services, said the administration has agreed to the increase.

Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker assassinated last year in Amsterdam by an Islamic extremist, is represented in the Philadelphia Film Festival by Cool!, a muddled, rap-happy portrait of juvenile gangstas rehabbed at a Dutch reform school called Glen Mills. Cool! clearly aspires to be in the tradition of lost-boys masterpieces Los Olvidados and Pixote, but is too exploitative to succeed as a cautionary tale and too cautious to succeed as an exploitation picture. Van Gogh, great-grand-nephew of the post-impressionist, cast his tale both with professional actors and actual inmates of Glen Mills.

Two Philadelphia teens who were court-ordered to a Delaware County residential school probably won't get time off for good behavior after they allegedly stole their counselor's keys early yesterday, then made off with his car. The two teens, who were sent to the Glen Mills School in Thornbury Township, stole their counselor's car keys from his gym bag while he was doing bed checks about 2:15 a.m., police said. The teens, ages 16 and 17, then managed to escape the facility unnoticed, find the counselor's 2003 gold Toyota Corolla and drive away in it, State Police said.

Delaware's largest school district did well to ease its zero-tolerance weapons policy after a first-grader was suspended 45 days for possession of a three-in-one eating utensil. The Board of Education of the Christina School District, which includes Newark, voted to reduce suspensions for kindergartners and first-graders to three to five days for bringing a potential weapon to school. That means it's safe for 6-year-old Zachary Christie to return to elementary school. The Cub Scout had received the district's inflexibly harsh maximum penalty - 45 days at a reform school - as punishment for possessing a camping utensil that consists of a spoon, fork, and knife.

Russell L. Goings speaks in the rhythms of a poet, and the men he addresses, prisoners in an outpost of the county prison system at 17th and Cambria, nod in response to his calls. In grade school, he tells them, he was poor and black, with dyslexia and a stutter. "They sat me on a stool and put a dunce cap on my head. The teacher said I was slow, and the kids called me Little Black Sambo. " He flunks kindergarten, and in sixth grade still can't read. But one day he will graduate at the top of his class.

Joseph J. Corvi, 92, a retired rigger who wrote a book about his stints in prison, died Saturday at Broomall Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. After an earlier stint at Graterford Prison, Mr. Corvi spent eight years at Eastern State Penitentiary in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia for being what he called "an uninvited guest. " In 1949 he was convicted of committing a series of burglaries in Germantown and on the Main Line. He would wait until twilight and break into homes where lights weren't flicked on, or he would rob a home on Sunday morning when the owners were at church.

An 11-year-old girl, homesick for reform school and tired and hungry, stabbed her neighbor to death in order to get back into reform school. It's been all over the radio and TV, but the newspapers have been respecting her privacy, despite being charged as an adult for first-degree murder by Philadelphia's get-tough prosecutor, District Attorney Lynne Abraham. This brings to mind a number of other incidents from the traditional story of a man breaking a police station window to get a warm place to sleep, to suicidal people on death row because they want the state to kill them.

The tough West Philadelphia corner where William Phillips' family said he once sold drugs was the same corner the 14-year-old was gunned down on Monday night. Police said Phillips was shot in the chest and killed after two men in a white Toyota opened fire and fled. Witnesses said the car was traveling on 55th Street near Lancaster Avenue, a few blocks from Phillips' home, when gun shots rang out about 10:30 p.m. A neighbor, John Lovelace, ran over, picked up Phillips, who lived on 55th Street near Media, police said, and took him to Lankenau Hospital where he died a few hours later.

While one of two suspects in Tuesday's shooting of a West Philadelphia High School student was arraigned yesterday on charges stemming from the incident, detectives pressed a search for his alleged accomplice. "We believe we know who the person is," said Capt. Thomas Quinn, commander of the Southwest Philadelphia Detective Division. "Detectives are now trying to locate witnesses who can identify the individual. " Once that part of the probe is completed, Quinn said, detectives can get a warrant and make the arrest.

Two Philadelphia teens who were court-ordered to a Delaware County residential school probably won't get time off for good behavior after they allegedly stole their counselor's keys early yesterday, then made off with his car. The two teens, who were sent to the Glen Mills School in Thornbury Township, stole their counselor's car keys from his gym bag while he was doing bed checks about 2:15 a.m., police said. The teens, ages 16 and 17, then managed to escape the facility unnoticed, find the counselor's 2003 gold Toyota Corolla and drive away in it, State Police said.

Matt Kibbe is the president of FreedomWorks, a Washington-based grassroots group active in the tea party movement and an organizer of rallies for private-school tuition vouchers in Pennsylvania. He visited The Inquirer's Editorial Board last week. Question: Why are you here? Kibbe: We think that Pennsylvania is perhaps the biggest opportunity nationally to do some substantial reform on education and to do something about the rising costs of failing schools and the children who are trapped in those schools.

WHY IS IT that city schools always need more money? We keep putting more taxpayer money into the system and get the same result. But we don't fix the real problem. We cater to the small percentage of kids who just don't care at the expense of the large majority and the teachers. Weed out the bad kids and put them in alternative schools - if that doesn't work, reform school. Kids who want to learn can do it from teachers who aren't always distracted by the bad ones. I went to school with 40 kids in each class.

Russell L. Goings speaks in the rhythms of a poet, and the men he addresses, prisoners in an outpost of the county prison system at 17th and Cambria, nod in response to his calls. In grade school, he tells them, he was poor and black, with dyslexia and a stutter. "They sat me on a stool and put a dunce cap on my head. The teacher said I was slow, and the kids called me Little Black Sambo. " He flunks kindergarten, and in sixth grade still can't read. But one day he will graduate at the top of his class.

'WHERE'S the grease?" Those words were scrawled across the shirt of a Naval Academy midshipman on Monday. Unfortunately, "the grease" has gone the way of food fights and Ladies Nights. The Herndon Monument is a 21-foot obelisk in an area of the Annapolis campus called Lover's Lane. Every spring, hundreds of plebes - Naval Academy freshmen - have plotted to scale the structure and replace a cup-like sailor's cap with a midshipman's cap. It's a rite of passage that has marked the end of a demanding first year at the academy.

Delaware's largest school district did well to ease its zero-tolerance weapons policy after a first-grader was suspended 45 days for possession of a three-in-one eating utensil. The Board of Education of the Christina School District, which includes Newark, voted to reduce suspensions for kindergartners and first-graders to three to five days for bringing a potential weapon to school. That means it's safe for 6-year-old Zachary Christie to return to elementary school. The Cub Scout had received the district's inflexibly harsh maximum penalty - 45 days at a reform school - as punishment for possessing a camping utensil that consists of a spoon, fork, and knife.

Joseph J. Corvi, 92, a retired rigger who wrote a book about his stints in prison, died Saturday at Broomall Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. After an earlier stint at Graterford Prison, Mr. Corvi spent eight years at Eastern State Penitentiary in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia for being what he called "an uninvited guest. " In 1949 he was convicted of committing a series of burglaries in Germantown and on the Main Line. He would wait until twilight and break into homes where lights weren't flicked on, or he would rob a home on Sunday morning when the owners were at church.

EAGLES CAREER: Selected in the third round of the 1973 NFL Draft from the University of Michigan, Logan started and finished his career primarily as a safety (1973-1983). A two-time All-Pro selection (1980, 1981) Logan snagged 23 interceptions for a total of 293 yards. In his final season, he was also utilized as a kick/punt return specialist. WHERE IS HE NOW: Logan didn't stray far from Philly as he now works with adjudicated teens at Saint Gabriel's Hall in Audubon, Pa., where he is the assistant dean of student affairs.

In "Son of Rambow," a schoolyard goon appears headed for reform school until he finds an occupation that suits his bullying nature perfectly - film director. The movie is distant cousin to "Shadow of the Vampire," the amusing horror-comedy built on the premise that the classic "Nosferatu" starred an actual vampire, and that on-set there's essentially no difference between a monster and a method actor. Both movies profile filmmakers with a near-destructive commitment to cinema - they function as comic profiles of "artists" who sacrifice nearly anything to get their movie made.