Bryn Mawr School

A former headmistress of St. Paul's School for Girls and a Baltimore native will become the interim head of Friends School in North Baltimore starting July 1. Lila B. Lohr, 56, who left St. Paul's in 1995 to take a job as head of the Princeton Day School in Princeton, N.J., will replace Jon M. Harris, who will leave at the end of the school year. "We are delighted to have Lila Lohr join the school community as interim head," said Kevin Carnell, chairman of Friends' board of trustees. "Her proven leadership, administrative expertise and outstanding communications skills have earned her the respect of colleagues and opinion leaders in the local and independent school communities."

Elizabeth McKenrick Winstead, an award-winning knitter and Bryn Mawr School graduate who established a scholarship fund there, died Tuesday of cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. She was 73. Mrs. Winstead, who went by the nickname Libby, was born in Baltimore in 1939. She was the eldest of three girls. Her father, a lawyer, served in the armed forces during World War II. During his absence, the girls and their mother moved to Pennsylvania to live with relatives. In early 1946, Mrs. Winstead's family returned to Baltimore, settling on North Charles Street near the city-county border.

I spent my first morning of spring break sitting in traffic court fighting a speed camera ticket. Good times all around, especially when you consider the great problems the city has had with its speed camera system. More than 25 drivers gathered in Judge Kathleen Sweeney's courtroom, and a whole pack of people were quickly found not guilty. Theirs were one of several cars going through intersections at the same time, and Judge Sweeney said the cameras apparently can't tell exactly which car in a group is speeding.

Local elementary and middle-school students performed in the Children's Choir at the Organization of American Kodaly Educators (OAKE) national conference in Hartford, Conn., March 20- 23. The students, representing Riderwood Elementary School, Dumbarton Middle School, Ridgely Middle School, and The Bryn Mawr School, were among 458 talented singers chosen from across the nation. These young singers performed the culminating concert at The First Cathedral on Saturday, March 23 after four days of rigorous practice with their conductors.

LaBria Shannon's enthusiasm is difficult to contain."I like when we read. I like when we had to write. I like when we read all different kinds of stories. I like taking books home from the library. I like the teachers " gushed the petite 9-year-old on her last day at Baltimore Readers' Camp at the Bryn Mawr School.The fourth-grader at Franklin Square Elementary is among 800 city youngsters attending programs on eight private school campuses this summer, courtesy of those schools.Although each of the more than 30 programs is distinctive, they have common characteristics.

WHEN TARA Williams nailed the pages of her protest on the door of Southern High School, she planted her feet in a modern version of "Here I Stand." OK, she probably used Scotch tape, and the document was actually the unauthorized March issue of the student newspaper, The Bulldog, which she refused to remove from her classroom door even at Principal Thomas Stevens' request. Mr. Stevens subsequently terminated her contract for next year (Tara, gone with the wind?), even though by all accounts she has been an effective teacher and role model.

A dozen Baltimore-area teen-agers sat around a conference table yesterday morning, struggling to describe what many called a life-changing experience: a trip to Israel to meet youths who were just like them, and yet so different."

Elaine Clare Geisz, a mathematics teacher and former assistant principal, died Tuesday of complications from a blood clot and heart attack at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 53 and lived in Phoenix. Mrs. Geisz had taught algebra to eighth-grade pupils at the Bryn Mawr School since September. She began her career in Baltimore County schools in the early 1970s and was an assistant principal at Stemmers Run, Hereford and Old Court middle schools. She had taught earlier at Pikesville Middle School and at Dumbarton Middle School in Rodgers Forge, where she was the math department chairwoman.

TEN-YEAR-OLD Jessica came home from school one afternoon in a purple rage, threw her backpack across the room and before it even hit the wall was blustering into her story."

Craig Lurz is on the telephone, trying to explain the anxiety -- some might call it torture -- of waiting to hear whether his children have been accepted into their private schools of choice, when his call-waiting kicks in.He returns to the telephone line after about 30 seconds. "That," Mr. Lurz says with a light laugh, "was another parent, wanting to know if our mail had come in yet."It hasn't. The wait continues.Mr. Lurz and his friend aren't the only ones who have been setting their clocks by the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks.