Baltimore County Schools

ON THE SITE... Man dies after being shot and stabbed in Central Park Heights :  A 43-year-old man found shot and stabbed in the city's Central Park Heights neighborhood late Sunday died from the wounds early Monday at Sinai Hospital. Sunday storm outages less than anticipated :  A fast-moving thunderstorm Sunday evening knocked out power to about 4,350 BGE customers, most of them in Baltimore City and County. Pastor: Md. boys who drowned in creek never swam before :  A pastor says three boys who drowned in a shallow creek on Maryland's Eastern Shore did not know how to swim and had never before been in the water.

Baltimore County Public Schools has announced that due to the effects of Friday's storms, 42 of public schools are without power as of Sunday evening and will be closed on Monday, July 2. Summer school does not begin in Baltimore County schools until Monday, July 9, but many have regular administrative offices, and some host programs during the summer months. School officials said that following the storm, 52 county school sites initially had lost power, and many schools, administrative offices, grounds and parking and walking areas were affected by fallen trees and other debris.

Although dozens are vying for Dallas Dance's attention in his first days as Baltimore County school superintendent, he plans to seek out disengaged students and parents of private school students, two groups that he hopes respectively to keep and to attract back into the fold. On Monday, Dance takes on the job of leading the 105,000-student system, which has grown far more racially diverse and economically stratified in the past decade. The 31-year-old Virginia native seems intent on asking those who are unhappy with the system what he must change to support students on the verge of dropping out and to challenge students whose families have the means to go elsewhere.

Ron Belinko spent a lot of time at high school games over the last 21 years, despite the heavy load of office work and meetings that came with being coordinator of athletics for the Baltimore County Public Schools. He never could let go of the student-athletes who remained the focus of everything he did over a 46-year career as a teacher, coach, athletic director and central office administrator with the county. Belinko, who will retire Friday, found no better measure of how well he did his job than seeing it all come together on the field.

Students at a Baltimore County high school drew a racially offensive picture on a classroom board last week and then sent it out on Twitter, prompting the principal to call police and suspend several students. The picture, drawn during class at Eastern Technical High School, shows three nooses hanging from the rafters of a building, according to Baltimore County police spokesman Cathy Batton. Beside the ropes are a burning cross with three stick figures in pointed hats, suggesting the Ku Klux Klan.

Howard "Bud" Ritter Jr., a retired Towson High School principal who had a second career as an antique toy and train dealer, died of dementia Monday at the Presbyterian Home of Maryland. The longtime Towson resident was 83. Born in Baltimore and raised in Rodgers Forge and in Stoneleigh, he was a 1946 graduate of Towson High School, where he played basketball and tennis. As a young man, he worked at the Bethlehem Steel Co. and as a Senator Theatre usher. Mr. Ritter enrolled at Towson State Teachers College.

The Baltimore County school board voted Tuesday night to get rid of a zero-tolerance approach to discipline and replace it with a policy that will give principals more discretion in deciding how to handle serious offenses. The county has one of the highest suspension rates in the state, and school leaders hope to reduce the number of times a student is sent home from school for minor infractions. The new policy will also give school leaders more discretion in cases where principals have no choice about what punishment to give a student.

Dr. Gloria Lea Bledsoe, a retired Baltimore County guidance counselor who established an Oldfields School early-childhood education program, died of cancer May 30 at Glen Meadows Assisted Living. She was 85 and lived in Towson for many years. Born Gloria Lea Whittle in Baltimore and raised on LaPaix Lane, she was a 1945 graduate of Notre Dame Preparatory School. After raising her family, she began teaching at Oldfields School in 1979. She established a nursery school along with an early-childhood education program, family members said.

Baltimore County's decision to cut nearly 200 teaching positions last year has had far-reaching consequences in high schools, where hundreds of classes have been dropped from the rolls, leaving many more students packed into classrooms. At Dulaney High School, for example, a chemistry teacher with a class of 34 said his students must take turns doing lab experiments because the stations are too small to accommodate more than three or four at a time. A journalism teacher doesn't have enough computers for each of her budding writers, so she sends part of the class to the library to do the work.