The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 18

B2 THE BOSTON GLOBE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2000 LessonPfow KATE ZERNIKE, DOREEN IUDICA VIGUE, DAVID ABEL, TARA YAEKEL Report faults Boston on advanced work for minority students 362 of 721 graduating Hispanics interested in these issues." The plan for the new center comes only a few weeks after the dean of Harvard College proposed revamping university policy to allow students to run businesses from their dormitory rooms. Harvard, which has long viewed such business training as anathema to its liberal arts spirit, hopes the program will measure up to Stanford's Tech Ventures Program, which helps students launch Web businesses. Harvard's new technology center will be a branch of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences and encourage students to set out on their own. But the center is still in the planning stage, and university officials are not sure how far it will go in assisting students in launching startups, Bottino said. "There are many things to resolve," he said.

"We're not quite sure how it's going to work yet." Students coalition using Web site to oppose MCAS he Boston public schools get a ID when it comes to helping black and Hispanic students enroll in gifted and advanced placement courses and continue on to college, according to a report schedule to be released today. The grade comes from the Applied Research Center in Oakland, which released a report looking at racial statistics in 12 cities. "It's really the model of what's happening in schools across America," said Center spokeswoman Tammy Johnson. The Center studies racism in major US institutions and community organizations. The report's findings are based on 1998-99 statistics, the latest available, and also looked at suspension rates and the number of minority teachers.

The Boston Parent Organizing Network compiled local data for the report. Only 1,403 of Boston's nearly 40,000 African-American students were in gifted or AP courses, according to the report. Hispanics struggled as well, with only 1,339 of 16,426 students in advanced courses. By comparison, 1,974 of Boston's 9,635 white students participated in advanced coursework. Boston was the only city to receive an overall passing grade, in part because its graduation rates for minority students were higher than most of the 11 other cities reviewed, which included Austin, Texas, Providence, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

Still, graduation statistics can be deceiving because they don't show what levels of education minorities received while in school and whether they were shuffled into less challenging courses, said Libero Delia Piana, one of the report's authors. Also, only 993 of Boston's 1,686 graduating African-American seniors went on to college, while only donating reading material. And four individual donors have provided scholarships for 10 students a year. "I'm overwhelmed at the response," said John Cawthorne, assistant dean at BC's Lynch School of Education, who has arranged the trips and fund-raising. "I thought we would go down and do some good things.

But people have been coming out of the woodwork, only too happy to help." Holy Family was founded in 1890, and has endured several downturns in its fortunes. After the order of nuns that founded it died out, the school began charging tuition to hire teachers. The families who attend are no longer Catholic but Baptist, and most of them have attended the school for several generations. Staying dry, getting hired on an alternative vacation lternative spring break tends to mean volunteer I trips like the one from BC. which have become common on campuses across the country.

But this year there are also several other options. At Boston University, the Wellness Center has arranged a "substance-free" (read drug- and alcohol-free) spring break to the Dominican Republic next week. Some college students admittedly might see substance-free spring break as an oxymoron. But Carolyn Norris, the head of the Wellness Center, said the trip has had a waiting list almost since the day it was announced. Each student signed an agreement not to drink or use alcohol on the trip.

Instead, they are encouraged to windsurf, snorkel, or explore a new country. And, for those indulging in more traditional spring breaks to aid. A spokesman for the Boston School Department could not be reached for comment last night. EC's ground-breaking trip pays off for Miss, school ast year, when Boston College sent a vanload of student vol- nteers to Natchez. over spring break to help out the nation's oldest African-American Catholic school, it was more or less a random act of kindness.

The students were simply responding to a letter from a nun who said her school was struggling to stay open. Given its 109-year history, its roots in the era of segregation, the school sounded interesting to the BC students, but they had no idea what they would find once they got there or what they would trigger. A Globe story about the trip prompted a rush of donations: 100 boxes of books and $250,000 in cash to help Holy Family school stay open. The BC students who started it all have remained consistent in their devotion. Another flotilla of volunteers drove to Mississippi over winter break in January to help do repairs and offer supplies.

Another 20 volunteers will spend next week's spring vacation helping out at the school. The students have helped fix run-down (and dangerous) staircases and classrooms, helped repair a playground, delivered basketballs and jump ropes. Their efforts inspired donations from the Bigelow Middle School in Newton, which gave 30 boxes of books. Four bookstores Brookline Booksmith, New England Mobile Book Fair, B. Dalton, and the Chestnut Hill Borders have adopted classes at Holy Family, during this trunk show event.

Lynn school board warns superintendent I- Hi If tomorrow in the National Education Association's Read Across America project, which encourages young students to read more. The date coincides with the birthday of Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, the creator of "The Cat in the Hat," "Green Eggs and Ham," and other children's books. Cities and towns across the state will celebrate the day with a range of events, from special readings of his books to "green eggs and ham" breakfasts. At the Pauline A.

Shaw School in Dorchester, third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders will read to younger students, while at the Harvard Elementary School in Harvard, children will dress up as their favorite Dr. Seuss characters and read their favorite books. Last year, 20 million children and adults participated in the reading campaign, according to organizers. Harvard's easing of rules followed by Web center To reduce barriers for student-run Internet startups, Harvard plans to launch a program this fall to teach undergraduates how to operate hightech businesses. Harvard's Technology and En-trepreneurship Center will feature speakers and classes on everything from attracting venture capital and operating Web sites to dealing with the legal issues in setting up a company, said the interim executive director of the new center, Paul Bottino.

"Its primary purpose is to provide undergraduates with both technological education and practical knowledge about the ways business are created," he said. 'We're trying to create an intellec tual gathering place for students tending a conference of the American Association of School Superintendents, and could not be reached for comment on last night's vote. Union head Joseph Gauvain had asked the committee to override the superintendent's decision not to post the job opening, and expressed disappointment the committee didn't take further action. "It's no different than when we started," he said. Gauvain said the union sent Mazareas a letter of grievance at the end of January, explaining that members were upset with the process by which FDa was chosen for the principal's position.

Mazareas denied the grievance in a letter to Gauvain nearly a month later. The union has already filed for arbitration over the controversy, Gauvain said. "We have the right and respon Grace closed the Billerica plant in 1964, a year after it bought the Zonolite company. The Department of Public Health has reviewed lung cancer statistics in Easthampton, which is in western Massachusetts. The agency concluded that the rates are below the state average, spokeswoman Roseanne Pawelec said.

The agency will be studying North Billerica soon, but Pawelec cautioned that the area traditionally has had a higher-than-average lung cancer rate, as a result of the higher number of smokers in Billerica. The Department of Environmental Protection will begin testing the soil around the Easthampton plant "when the snow recedes a bit" spokesman Rick Lom-banhsaid. The federal EPA plans to begin its investigation soon, as a result of its work in lobby. There, it found very high rates of asbestos-related deaths and illnesses among the 2J5O0 people who hSe in the rural Montana town. News of the disease in lobby has traveled to Capitol H3, where today, a bi'J concerning compensation for asbestos victims is scheduled for a vote before the House Judiciary Committee.

GLOBE STAFF PHOTO WENDY MAEDA Mayor Thomas M. Menlno listened yesterday as Peter Tsang, a fourth-grader at the Qulncy School, read an essay about his teacher, John Moy. The Learning Channel sponsored an essay contest on "Everyday Heroes" and awarded Tsang the grand prize, a $1,000 scholarship, at a City Hall ceremony. Florida, another twist: At Career Expo 2000 in Panama City, and South Padre Island, Texas, recruiters from what the expo's planners say are Fortune 500 companies will meet with college students hoping to sign a job deal on the sands. Planners vow a "beach bonanza," bringing together employers and potential employees "in a relaxed, hassle-free environment wiiere both sides can explore options and career possibilities." Students might want to make that one substance free, too.

Celebrating Dr. Seuss by helping young readers ommunities across Mass achusetts, from Chelmsford to Chicopee, will participate tive bargaining agreement. Mazareas has come under fire for other actions recently, including creating a new staff development job for his wife, hiring a personal lawyer paid for with school funds, and employing a part-time consultant at a salary of $70,000. Last night's vote by the school committee, which came nine days before a scheduled committee meeting to review Mazareas's contract, is a preview of larger decisions to come next week. At least one committee member vice chairwoman Loretta Cuffe O'Donnell has said she wants to buy out the remaining 2Vi years of the superintendent's five-year contract But Mazareas has refused to step down, even though he would receive between $500,000 and $600,000 in the buyout Mazareas was in California at tests around the former plants in North Billerica and Easthampton.

The Department of Public Health, which already examined cancer rates around the Easthampton plant now plans to study them in North Billerica. Officials with both agencies said they are conducting their investigations as a result of a Boston Globe article about Grace's manufacture of Zonolite Attic Insulation, aloose-fill insulation that contained asbestos. Grace, which sold its Zonolite Attic Insulation from 1963 to 19S4, never labeled its product as containing asbestos and fought moves by regulators to require warning labels, the Globe reported Feb. 14. Grace has consistently maintained that its product is safe.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency also has had plans on the table to study the Easthampton plant The plants made products from vermiculite, a mineral Grace mined in Lobby, Mont The mine, which closed in 1990, was contaminated with asbestos. Grace removed some, but not all, of the asbestos at a mill in lobby, then shipped the vermiculite ore to 32 plants around the country, including the one in Easthampton, according to documents obtained by the Globe. ByTaraYaekel GLOBE CORRESPONDENT LYNN As several dozen teachers watched tensely from the sidelines, the Lynn school committee issued a warning to Superintendent James Mazareas last night for transferring a principal from the Thurgood Marshall Middle School to Lynn English High School without posting the job or asking the committee for input. The warning, which was approved by a 4-2 vote after an hour of often-heated discussion, stemmed from complaints by the city's teacher's union that the superintendent's decision to transfer Principal Andrew Fila from the middle school to the high school without outside input stripped other possible applicants of the chance to apply for the post and violated the union's collec student group ODDosed to I the state's MCAS tests, the I Student Coaltion for Alter natives to MCAS, is gaining momentum, as word spreads of a proposed statewide boycott of the April exams. Founded by several students at Monument Mountain High School in Great Barrington, the coalition uses e-mail and newsletters to communicate with other students and parents across the state.

It also has a Web site, www.scam-mcas.com. If you have an education issue you want aired or thoughts on the state of education today, write to Ijesson Plan, City Room, The Boston Globe, P.O. Box 2378, Boston, MA 02107-2378 or send e-mail to educateglobe. com. sibility under Massachusetts general laws to negotiate the working conditions for the school employees," he said.

School committee members said they did not decide to override Fila's appointment because they were hoping to avoid turmoil at English High, where Fila began as principal Monday. Some on the school committee called the meeting an attempt to stir a pot already simmering at a time when the superintendent wasn't available to defend himself. TUESDAY number 2977 TUESDAY PAYOFFS (based ket) EXACT ORDER All 4 digits $4,380 First or last 3 $613 Any 2 digits $53 Any 1 digit $5 ANY ORDER All 4 digits $365 First 3 digits $102 Last 3 digits $204 MASS MILLIONS Feb. 28 2 5 28 36 42 43 (Bonus ball 4) Jackpot: $25 million No jackpot winners. MASS CASH Feb.

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