New Principal

April Peters recalls her first few months as a Baltimore high school principal as "hell." Last fall, as many schools wrestled with the consequences of short staffing and budget cuts, fights broke out between students and fires were deliberately set in the Southwestern High complex shared by her school, No. 430, and two others. The low point for the 34-year-old New Jersey native came in November, when one of her students was stabbed in school by another teenager. For John Davis, another newly minted principal charged with launching a high school in South Baltimore two years ago, the rookie year could not have been more different.

In the late 1980s, Marcy Leonard was a student leader and soccer player at Atholton High School. Today, she is back at the Columbia school - as its principal. "It's incredible," Leonard said last week from her new office. "How many times do you get a chance to do it? "I got a phenomenal education here. I got an opportunity to grow not only as a student but as a person. To have an opportunity to come back here and help create those opportunities for this generation of students is amazing.

Daric V. Jackson is greeting students in the lobby of Woodlawn High when a mother and daughter approach. "She had behavioral issues last year, but not this year because you're here," says the mother, Carrie Tucker, as she introduces herself and her daughter, LaTevia Carroll, to the new principal. "I heard you're not going to take anything from anyone. I heard you are the man to get the job done." That's just what Jackson wants to hear as he embarks on one of the toughest assignments in the Baltimore County school district.

Even after his three-year tenure as assistant principal at Oakland Mills High School ended in 1999, Frank Eastham never really left. After all, Eastham lives a few blocks from the Columbia school. And he continued to wear clothes displaying Oakland Mills pride. "You could leave Oakland Mills [High School] but you can't take Oakland Mills out of someone," said Eastham, who calls the school his home. "I would frequently catch flak from some of my other administrators because I continued to wear Oakland Mills spirit wear when I was out and about in the community."

Charles Johnson-Bey, Barney J. Wilson does not see a mess when he looks at the darkened hallways of Polytechnic Institute, with their half-painted stairwells and rows of desks that have been banished from classrooms during summertime cleaning. He sees a blank canvas. In his mind's eye, the school's new principal sees the hallways, the gym, the cafeteria filled with Internet-equipped computer stations, as ubiquitous as water fountains. He sees youngsters' hip-hop garb replaced (with their consent)

New principals have been named for eight Howard County schools and the Applied Research Laboratory, which houses technology education. Assignments and reassignments for the fall semester were announced yesterday during a school board meeting: Applied Research Laboratory: Mary Day (current principal of Howard High) Centennial High: Scott Pfeifer (current principal of River Hill High) Clemens Crossing Elementary: Peggy Dumler (current assistant principal at Talbott Springs Elementary) Glenelg High: Karl Schindler (current assistant principal at Howard High)

In moves affecting nearly all of its schools, the Baltimore County school board appointed new principals for 27 schools and assistant principals at more than 40 at a meeting last night. This was the second consecutive year that Superintendent Joe A. Hairston has made significant changes in the leadership of the system's 163 schools. But some of the decisions were not of his making. The General Assembly did not renew Maryland's program to rehire retired principals and teachers at struggling schools because lawmakers could not decide how to address concerns about misuse.

It is a new semester and, it appears, a new day, at Annapolis High School. That's the impression officials at the embattled Anne Arundel County school hoped to leave with parents at a "Back to School" event last night marking the start of the second half of the academic year. The event was a turning point of sorts for the school administration, which was on the defensive during much of the fall after Deborah H. Williams took over as principal. School officials say they have seen fewer problems lately over Williams' management style - which polarized the community from the first days of her tenure and distracted students and teachers.

Everybody noticed the changes at Annapolis High School yesterday, from the girls who arrived at school in midriff-revealing outfits to the boys caught snoozing in class. Yesterday - the day that about 75,900 county students returned to classes after a two-month summer break - appeared to be a fresh start for Annapolis High. The school, which has been troubled by discipline problems in the past, is under new administration for the first time in a decade. Students here had a lot to digest.

Sixth-grader Sierrea Pope hurried down the hallway yesterday after her West Baltimore Middle School Principal Everett X. Garnett, waving a neatly folded note. "Mr. Garnett! Mr. Garnett! I wrote you a letter!" she said, nearly tripping over herself to give him her request for a day-long respite from the school's mandatory uniform policy -- a small gesture that illustrated many things about the school and its leader. Several years ago, West Baltimore's kids weren't writing their principal and sixth-graders at nearby Calverton Middle school didn't have boxes of new books waiting to be unloaded into a renovated library.