Town upset over possible killers in high school LAKE PLACID, N Y. (AP) — Taiib Mustnfa Shakir was the hoy next door — good grades at Lake Placid High, popular, even doted a loc^sl girl — but with a difference. "Next door." In this case, was the Camelot psychiatri(. center, which treats troubled youths from around the Northeast. Everybody knew Shakir and the other "Camelot boya” came from troubled backgrounds, but most assumed their problems wore limited to childhood traumas or pat ty thievery. Then, one day last month, Shakir flod Camelot and returned to his old Washington. D C., neighborhood. There, police said, he tried to rob a convenience store; a 23-year-old clerk. Tae Shik Yoon, was mortally wound ed. Shakir, 17. was charged with murder — and not for the first time, authorities revealed. Ijike Placid —an idyllic, low-crime resort, twice host of the Winter Olympics — was stunned. Resident Nancy Heattiu recalled hearing the news on television with her 16-year-old daughter. Sarah. "I said, My God, Sarah! You know a murderer.’ " As it turned out. Shakir was not the only Camelot boy with death on his record. The Washington Post report ed that three other boys from that city who were sent to Camelot were involved in homicides. And then a H year old Camelot boy was charged with sodomy and sexual abuse. The reports sent a chill through I-ako Placid, a remote, picture-postcard town nestled in the highest peaks of the Adirondacks where talk this time of year usually revolves around ski conditions (iamelot and school officials rushed to call a public, meeting to assuage fears. Hundreds of residents packed the Dike Placid High School auditorium for what turned out to lie a raucous, marathon debate on Camelot's poli cies. "How in God’s name did you take a murderer into your facility?" Susan Holzer asked ns hundreds of peo ple around her applauded. "It's not a psychiatric prob VOW ACCEPTING Pun vary Carr Internal Medicine PtUcntt | John 0 WHion. M D 1200 Hilyard Slfcrt U\ «>2* covered hy roo*» m«uramn irxlodtnf tucnc Scletujre plant s and profits at fun parks. "It is more expensive and doesn't improve education." Graff said Hut Gary Field, principal of College Purk Klementnry in suburban Atlanta, the only Georgia school on a year-round schedule, said the Inmefits outweigh any business lost from a shorter summer vacation. "If you're going to run your life around summer camp or amusement parks, then there's something wrong.” he said About 1.5 million students nationwide, from 3.5 percent to 3 7 [am ent of all students, are in year-round programs, said Charles Ballinger, executive director of the National Council on Year-Round Education, based in ulf you're going to run your life around summer camp or amusement parks, then there’s something wrong,” Gary Field Principal College Park Elementary San Iliego Field und other educators said squeezing summer vacation helps students better retain what they learned in the preceding months Alphonse Buccino, dean of the Universi ty of Georgia's College of Education. isn't so sun- I le said the research is too sketchy And anyway, he said, the key factor is not whether vacation time is fragmented but how much time students spend in die classroom. "The key variable is the number of days in the school year." Huci ino said. "The Japan ese school year is 240 da\s," compared with 1H0 days in the United States. Most year-round si hoots have the same number of school days and vacation days as traditional schools and simply reconfigure vacation time Instead of one 12-week break in the summer, with assorted days off for hol idays during the year, as at traditional schools, the year-round programs adopt calendars with variations on a six-week summer break and three three-week breaks through the rest of the year. Graff asserted that some si boo! systems had dropped year-round si hedules because they were too expensive and causer! too many problems. He cited Los Angeles, where the school board in May si rapped a year-round schedule for 540 schools, ending a two-year experiment that cost $8.4 million. Ballinger said the Los Angeles schools didn't drop year-round schedules for edu cational reasons. "If those schools were air-conditioned, we believe they would have stayed on the year round schedule," he said. Los Angeles parents were on record com plaining that the schedule forced their chil dren to endure hot classrooms during the summer and created child-care problems on winter breaks. Florida state Rep. Alzo Roddick, D-Orlan do. supports the idea of year-round schools, despite the presence of Disneyworld in his home district. He said such big theme parks favor the idea because shorter school breaks would even out the traditional crowded peri ods. Reddick said the agricultural calendar that governs the United States' traditional sum mer-long vacation is an anachronism and makes the nation less competitive. He recent ly visited Japan and Korea, where he noted children going to school early Saturday morn ings "If we don't do a 1 letter job of educating our people, we will become a third-rate nation," lie said. Keith Green’s two children attend College Park Klementary, which has a six-week sum mer vacation and another two-week break in September. 1 ie said his family's trips had not been spoiled by the year-round schedule. "In fact, my daughter and son attended a summer camp for four weeks," Green said. "The main thing is our children's education. We can always work around it to get to amuse ment parks." LIVE ENTERTAINMENT NIGHTLY DAILY BEVERAGE SPECIALS POOL TABLES FREE DARTS 6 FOOSBALL ASSORTED EATS tmokint preferred No Appointments Necessary BARBER SHOP ★ Proudly Serving U for 71 Years ★ Wide range ol Lanza and Paul Mitchell Products available PH: (503) 343-7654 851 E. 13th o^/w.Emen*1'1