Baltimore Sun education reporter Sara Neufeld has a story today that city schools chief Andres Alonso is urging students at the Homeland Security Academy in Walbrook to transfer and that he will ask the school board to close the building this summer.

I had visited this school a few months ago to speak at Phil Turner's journalism class. I noted in a column and blog how the students came from bad neighborhoods yet were eager to learn, and that they felt frustrated because they felt the school was unsafe, teachers didn't teach and the principal didn't care.

By that time, Alonso was already considering taking drastic action. After the column ran, the student I wrote about met with the mayor at City Hall, administrators from North Avenue descended on the building to keep order and the principal was removed. A good lesson for students studying journalism about making change.

As I reported, the school was in a deplorable condition. I was allowed to walk in without anyone questioning why I was there -- remember, this is a HOMELAND SECURITY school -- and I wandered around the building freely. Students complained bathrooms were locked, the halls were full of kids when they should've been in class, and, when Sara visited later, she noted an entrance sealed with crime-scene tape, even though there was no crime.

The Homeland Security Academy was born in 2005 when the city broke up Walbrook High School. The academy's theme is law enforcement and similar disciplines -- kids can learn about police or firefighter work, or the armed services. The name might have changed four years ago, but the troubled school's link to police began back in 1998. Here's part of a story I wrote in June of that year:

Students who return to Walbrook High School this fall may not recognize their old haunt in the heart of "the Junction." Classmates wearing sports shirts. Teachers in the halls. A police officer at the home of every student who takes a sick day.There will be a new principal. And a new name. Bleachers, long missing from the athletic field, will be in place. And skipping the cafeteria lunch to grab a sandwich at the corner deli will be out of the question.

Welcome to the Uniformed Services Academy at Walbrook.

Targeted by the state last year for takeover because of poor test scores and scarred by violence, the Northwest Baltimore school will be operated by a private, nonprofit group headed by Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier.

The long-awaited takeover became official this week when the city school board approved the consortium's choice for principal -- Audrey Bundley, himself a product of city schools.

Bundley, 38, leaves his post as principal of Greenspring Middle School and replaces former Walbrook Principal Marilyn E. Rondeau, who has yet to be assigned a new position.

"We're going to make a change to the school. We're going to clean the place up," said Col. Alvin A. Winkler, the head of the Police Department's Youth Bureau. "We want to make it fun to learn. But you can have fun without carrying a knife or a gun to school."

Parents have some reservations about the project, which transforms Walbrook -- on Edgewood Street in an area known as Walbrook Junction -- from a neighborhood school into a citywide magnet, where students will choose one of four themed acade- mies: police, fire, maritime or business.

It's a shame it has failed again.