Briefly... CITY/REGION

Teachers contracts withdrawn

The school district has decided not to require teachers to sign "professional employee's contracts" that were mailed to educators last weekend.

After speaking with district officials yesterday morning, Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, told his members on the PFT Web site that the district's human-resources department retracted the one-page contracts.

The union and the district are negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. The current contract expires Aug. 31.

Charter schools lauded

Two charter schools, Science Leadership Academy and Independence Charter School, will be honored during tomorrow's School Reform Commission meeting.

Both schools recently won national recognition. Science Leadership, at Logan Square, was one of 31 schools nationally to win the Apple Distinguished School Award, given to schools that have implemented a 21st-century vision of education using Apple technology. Independence Charter, at 16th and Lombard streets, won the Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for International Education.

10G to Ashe tennis for youth

Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education has received a $10,000 grant from the Philadelphia Foundation to fund expanded youth civic-engagement opportunities for its Goodstein Junior Leaders, the youth leadership program for youngsters between the ages of 14 and 18.

Mobile-home mayhem

Lana Hill, 47, of Mullica Hill, Gloucester County, N.J., faces aggravated-assault charges after allegedly stabbing her estranged husband, Joseph Hill, 46, in the leg inside a trailer home in Washington Township Monday night during a domestic dispute.

Joseph Hill was taken to Cooper University Hospital, in Camden. Lana Hill is being held at the Gloucester County women's detention center in Clarksboro.

Alex's cancer fundraiser Sat.

Alex's "Original" Lemonade Stand, an annual event commemorating the origin of the movement that has spread around the world to raise funds for childhood-cancer research, will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Penn Wynne Elementary School, 250 E. Haverford Road, Wynnewood.

Alexandra Scott, who began selling lemonade at her Wynnewood home at age 4 to raise money to fight the cancer that would kill her at age 8, attended the Penn Wynne School. *

- Staff and wire reports