Across Md., a call for classrooms with walls

Baltimore Sun by Nicole Fuller

As the students in Mr. Incorvati's fifth-grade math class solved a word problem, the hum of more than 20 voices carried past the low-slung partitions. Not far away, Ms. Mulfry unfurled a United States map and told her class about shoreline sediment. Mr. Peddicord described a rudder to his students.

And Ms. Graham was going over math problems on an overhead projector. With sound coming from all directions in this corner of Crofton Woods Elementary, she relied on a microphone to be heard.

Crofton Woods Elementary is one of 34 Anne Arundel County schools without walls separating its classes. Now, county school leaders are planning to spend millions of dollars to construct real classrooms - joining school systems across the state in a multimillion-dollar mission to put to rest the '70s-era experiment of "open-space" schools.