School Yard

Students at Coebourn Elementary School must have had a tough time keeping their eyes on the blackboard Wednesday as police officers - one with a gun drawn - converged in the courtyard outside their classrooms to arrest a retail-theft suspect. Officer Scott Ely had stopped his car to question a 14-year-old Chester Township boy on Edgmont Avenue, Police Chief John M. Eller said. When Ely got out of his police car, the youth, wearing a knit cap and coat, fled across Edgmont Avenue, police said.

A man and woman driving to work through the cold and snow yesterday in West Philadelphia spotted a sight they will probably never forget. In the school yard of Commodore John Barry Elementary School was a partially clad toddler - a little girl they later found had been stabbed. The weapon, a steak knife, was left stuck in her back. "They were astute enough to observe this baby unattended sitting in the school yard . . . in the snow, partially clothed," Police Capt. John Darby said.

A .22-caliber bullet fired during a drive-by shooting pierced the leg of a 6-year-old girl yesterday afternoon as she played in the school yard of McDaniel Elementary School in South Philadelphia. As news of the shooting that injured Aniya Trippett spread through the neighborhood, parents rushed to the school near 22d and Moore Streets. As they stood near yellow crime-scene tape, many parents expressed concerns about the safety of the school's 800 students. "A lot of the kids were upset and crying," said Del Thomas, whose 6-year-old, Alaiyah, is a kindergarten student.

  The case gained international attention and became a rallying point for anti-bullying advocates. But investigators have found no evidence that a school-yard fight had anything to do with the death of sixth grader Bailey O'Neill, the Delaware County district attorney said Monday. The death was the result of epileptic seizures, District Attorney Jack Whelan said. He said his office did plan to file juvenile-level simple-assault charges. Whelan said an autopsy by Edwin Lieberman of the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office revealed "no physical finding of trauma or evidence that trauma played a role" in the boy's death on March 3 at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

This is a war story told by an eyewitness. Kevin Purcell does the driving - in a Prius, no less - as we visit the battlefields of his youth, familiar places he hadn't set foot on in decades. Here's where somebody got shot, here's where somebody got stabbed. And here, he tells me, is where "grown white men were swinging baseball bats at grown black men who were swinging back with their belts and broom handles. " For a boy of 10, as Purcell was in 1969 when these events took place in his Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, it all seemed unreal.

The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission will make it easier for parents to check the safety records of school buses. Information will be available in the "school bus report cards" the agency posts online at njmvc.gov. The website now posts the percentage of buses in a specific school yard or bus company that have passed inspection or been taken out of service. It also lists the reasons for failing inspection and subsequent inspection results. - AP

This was not the first time State Rep. Ralph Acosta has come before the school board to decry the conditions of Potter-Thomas Elementary School in North Philadelphia. For at least a year, School District of Philadelphia officials said, administrators have been trying to respond to the Democratic lawmaker's complaints about the trash, human waste and graffiti on the school grounds. But, Acosta returned to the school board yesterday to say that the district's remedies haven't worked and that conditions inside the predominantly Hispanic school are just as bad as those outside.

They cleaned up a school yard, beautified a recreation center, and held a benefit car wash. They also visited nursing home residents, delivered meals to shut-ins, and staged a carnival for children with face-painting, relay races, games and clowns. More than 1,000 La Salle University students, faculty and staff woke early yesterday for a full morning of community volunteerism that is becoming an annual tradition at the Philadelphia institution. In all, about one out of every three undergraduates at La Salle participated in the third annual "Branch Out Day. " The event began with 500 volunteers in 1996.

New role for Dilworth House makes sense We'd like to thank The Inquirer for recognizing the importance of preserving the home of former Mayor Richardson Dilworth ("Keep it, with a new role," Aug. 12). The newspaper's editorial persuasively articulated the multiple reasons why Philadelphia, a city known for historic preservation, should not destroy the home of one of our most important civic leaders. He was a symbol of the renewal of Center City that began in the 1950s and continues to the present day. The Dilworth House has intrinsic historic value as a significant building in the Society Hill Historic District and should be preserved for that reason alone.

Classes were interrupted and 420 students were herded into a sheltered area of the St. Athanasius - Immaculate Conception School in West Oak Lane yesterday after several air-gun pellets were fired into the school yard from a house across the street. No one was injured by the shooting, which shattered windows at the school and in a worker's van parked nearby. Three 17-year-old youths emerged from a house in the 7100 block of Limekiln Pike, across from the school, after police responded to the call with several patrol cars and a hostage negotiation team.

This is a war story told by an eyewitness. Kevin Purcell does the driving - in a Prius, no less - as we visit the battlefields of his youth, familiar places he hadn't set foot on in decades. Here's where somebody got shot, here's where somebody got stabbed. And here, he tells me, is where "grown white men were swinging baseball bats at grown black men who were swinging back with their belts and broom handles. " For a boy of 10, as Purcell was in 1969 when these events took place in his Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, it all seemed unreal.

  The case gained international attention and became a rallying point for anti-bullying advocates. But investigators have found no evidence that a school-yard fight had anything to do with the death of sixth grader Bailey O'Neill, the Delaware County district attorney said Monday. The death was the result of epileptic seizures, District Attorney Jack Whelan said. He said his office did plan to file juvenile-level simple-assault charges. Whelan said an autopsy by Edwin Lieberman of the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office revealed "no physical finding of trauma or evidence that trauma played a role" in the boy's death on March 3 at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

EMPTY SEATS aren't the only things Philadelphia public schools have too many of. For the second time in less than a week, a loaded handgun was found at an elementary school. Police were called Monday to John F. Reynolds School, on 24th Street near Jefferson in North Philadelphia, shortly after 8 a.m. School-district officials said a 7-year-old student brought a handgun into the school in his backpack and showed the gun to multiple students before class. At some point, officials said, the first-grader took the gun out of the bag and pointed it at another student.

The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission will make it easier for parents to check the safety records of school buses. Information will be available in the "school bus report cards" the agency posts online at njmvc.gov. The website now posts the percentage of buses in a specific school yard or bus company that have passed inspection or been taken out of service. It also lists the reasons for failing inspection and subsequent inspection results. - AP

Hank Lundy was 18 when he got into his first "real" fight. As he was walking out of school in South Philly, a fellow student bumped into him, throwing his shoulder into Lundy's chest before walking into the school. So Lundy waited outside the schools doors for him to come back outside. The principal came out and told Lundy not to wait for the student. Lundy refused. About 15 minutes later, the student returned. When he saw Lundy, he charged after him and delivered a kick to his shin.

The purple and gold balloons festooned in the fenced-off yard around Issac Sheppard School blew lazily in the hot June air. It was just a little before noon — the calm before the storm. In a few minutes, Sheppard's undersized corridors would be overrun with about 400 excited, stampeding little ones primed for Fun Day, the elementary school's end-of-the-year afternoon of games, activities, food and, well, fun. Parent volunteers have come ready for battle, with brushes for face-painting, buns for hot dogs, nail polish and remover for mini-manicures.

Waving to her second grader, an eager boy standing in the school yard looking up at his new teacher, Sasha Vann couldn't help but smile. "I'm more excited than he is," Vann said, nodding at her son, Malik Johnson. "It's a new year. A new building. A new start. " More than 167,000 Philadelphia public school students returned to classrooms yesterday, including 650 who went back to Barry Elementary, a new $35 million structure in West Philadelphia. In all, two new buildings - Barry and Audenried High School, in the Grays Ferry section of the city - opened yesterday, and about a dozen more schools opened additions, major renovations or new facilities.

New role for Dilworth House makes sense We'd like to thank The Inquirer for recognizing the importance of preserving the home of former Mayor Richardson Dilworth ("Keep it, with a new role," Aug. 12). The newspaper's editorial persuasively articulated the multiple reasons why Philadelphia, a city known for historic preservation, should not destroy the home of one of our most important civic leaders. He was a symbol of the renewal of Center City that began in the 1950s and continues to the present day. The Dilworth House has intrinsic historic value as a significant building in the Society Hill Historic District and should be preserved for that reason alone.

High school soccer player becomes high school football kicker. It's a familiar story that is played out every year all over the country. It is David Akers' story, too, but his tale has a little twist. "I was a soccer player and we were playing school-yard football," the Eagles' placekicker said. "We were at the high school field and one of the coach's sons was out there playing with us. " Each of the kickers in South Jersey's bumper crop of them this fall each have their own story to tell.

He had turned 18 three days before he was shot in the back. It was a murder barely noticed by most of Philadelphia, still reeling from the sexual assault of an 8-year-old girl in a public library and the shooting of a 10-year-old boy in a school yard just days before. But the life of Raymond Antonne Dawson, a jokester with a passion for sports, meticulous grooming, and his mother's yams and turkey wings, had touched the nearly 500 people who crowded into Zion Baptist Church at Broad and Venango Streets for his funeral yesterday.