Dasher

Dasher Green Elementary and Owen Brown Middle schools, now housed in the same building, will merge over the summer and open as a pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade facility in August, the school board and system staff announced yesterday during a meeting with the Howard County Council. "Really, it's just one building from a planning [perspective]," said Sydney L. Cousin, retiring deputy school superintendent. "This is an opportunity for the new administration to use the space differently."

On February 23, 2003 EDNA V. of Catonsville; loving wife of the late William H. Owens; mother of Carl W. Dasher (Joyce M.) and Gary W. Dasher (Margaret); sister of William E. McDonald (Marie C.), Paul O. McDonald (Jackie); grandmother of Karla Joy Boyer, Lee Alan Dasher, Howard Q. Dasher, Kelly Dasher, Laurel Lynn Voss, Dixie Lea Dasher and Ginger Leigh Dasher. Also survived by seven great grandchildren. Friends may call at the GARY L. KAUFMAN FUNERAL HOME AT MEADOWRIDGE MEMORIAL PARK INC., 7250 Washington Blvd.

The school buses were rolling again Monday, lunchboxes packed and school supplies in hand as county children headed back for the new school year. At every school, seasoned students and teachers were joined by their rookie counterparts. At Dasher Green Elementary, a group of 4- and 5-year-olds lined up outside for the first day of kindergarten with a remarkable quietness that suggested their possible uncertainty about what awaited them inside. Their parents snapped photos, gave assurances and waved goodbye as teachers guided the newly minted schoolchildren to their classrooms.

It started out as a Saturday morning hobby. Jim Dasher, owner of 100 acres in Worthington Valley outside Glyndon, would spend a few hours each weekend growing vegetables on a small plot behind his home. He figured he would give whatever food he could cultivate to area soup kitchens and emergency food banks. He knew it wouldn't be much, but it would be something. Over time, his friends started coming to help. Then word spread and more helpers would come. The plot became acres, and in 1993 a nonprofit agency built around growing fruits and vegetables for shelters and soup kitchens in the Baltimore region was born.

Workers digging near Oakland Mills Road and Dasher Court in Columbia nicked a Verizon cable Wednesday afternoon, causing telephone service interruptions for at least 150 residents in Owen Brown, a Verizon spokeswoman said yesterday. Verizon said it was working to fix the problem and expected to have full service restored by about 7 p.m. today, if the weather permits. "We're working around the clock trying to replace a 750-foot section of cable and dry out the rest," spokeswoman Sandy Arnette said.

Dasher Green Elementary School will plant a tree in memory of Rick Stohler, a teacher and star of numerous dinner theater productions throughout the region, who died April 10. The tree will be dedicated at the school June 4. Toby's Dinner Theatre, where Stohler starred in several productions, is planning an event sometime in June to celebrate his life. Stohler, who died from complications of renal cancer at his Columbia home, taught third grade at Dasher Green Elementary School in Columbia from 1997 until he was forced to stop teaching because of his illness.

As state educators are looking to require that beginning kindergartners be older to ensure they're prepared for the rigors of the classroom, Howard County officials are hoping to catch children younger and younger - for the same reason. Running Brook Elementary School in Columbia has initiated a new Parents as Teachers program, bringing teachers into homes to teach parents how to teach their infants and toddlers. The county will break ground on its third Head Start facility in a matter of weeks.

As state educators are looking to require that beginning kindergartners be older to ensure they're prepared for the rigors of the classroom, Howard County officials are hoping to catch children younger and younger - for the same reason. Running Brook Elementary School in Columbia has initiated a new Parents as Teachers program, bringing teachers into homes to teach parents how to teach their infants and toddlers. The county will break ground on its third Head Start facility in a matter of weeks.

"Staying on the green" is a big topic at Dasher Green Elementary School. But don't grab your clubs for a quick game of golf quite yet. "Staying on the green" simply means behaving yourself. The phrase is a motto of the Beary Good Club, a new school-wide behavior program at Dasher Green. Named for the school mascot - the bear - the program uses the colors of the traffic light to rank behavior. Green stands for good behavior, yellow, for an infraction of the rules and red means serious trouble.

The annual Howard County suspension report shows that, overall, only a small percentage of the district's 44,000 students misbehaved last year - as usual, from 5 percent to 7 percent. And though numbers of district suspensions are creeping up slowly, serious offenses in all the schools, such as sex-related incidents and arson, are going down every year. But the devil is in the details. The report gives school-by-school breakdowns of misbehavior - fights, class disruptions, cheating and alcohol and drug use, for example.