Oakland Mills High

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."

The long-serving principal of Oakland Mills High School, who acknowledged last week that he is appealing punishment in a grade-changing scandal, has been transferred to the Homewood School as principal of the alternative learning center, Howard County school officials announced yesterday. Marshall Peterson, who presided over the Columbia school for nine years, asked for the move last week, and school officials determined that the reassignment was in the principal's and the school system's best interest, said Superintendent Sydney L. Cousin.

For Ken Hovet, life now is a mixture of relief, anger and anxiety. The 43-year-old former Oakland Mills High School athletic director and football coach got his teaching job and back pay restored by the Howard County school board this week. Today, he is due in Circuit Court, seeking $113,000 in legal fees and damages from his fight to obtain access to documents he needed to prepare a defense against charges that he should be fired in a grade-changing scandal. But important as all that is, there is something more vital to Hovet, a plain-spoken father of three who agreed to be interviewed yesterday in the downtown Washington law office of Thomas R. Bundy III, a 1991 Oakland Mills High graduate who represented Hovet.

For Ken Hovet, life now is a mixture of relief, anger and anxiety. The 43-year-old former Oakland Mills High School athletic director and football coach got his teaching job and back pay restored by the Howard County school board this week. Today, he is due in Circuit Court, seeking $113,000 in legal fees and damages from his fight to obtain access to documents he needed to prepare a defense against charges that he should be fired in a grade-changing scandal. But important as all that is, there is something more vital to Hovet, a plain-spoken father of three who agreed to be interviewed yesterday in the downtown Washington law office of Thomas R. Bundy III, a 1991 Oakland Mills High graduate who represented Hovet.

The principal of Oakland Mills High School acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he also faces punishment in the grade-changing scandal that has rocked the Howard County school, and has appealed to the Board of Education, which this week overturned a penalty imposed on the former athletic director. "I've had to face my own disciplinary action, which I consider to be unwarranted, arbitrary and capricious," Oakland Mills Principal Marshall Peterson said in a telephone interview.

The principal of Oakland Mills High School acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he also faces punishment in the grade-changing scandal that has rocked the Howard County school, and he has appealed to the Board of Education, which this week overturned a penalty imposed on the former athletic director. "I've had to face my own disciplinary action, which I consider to be unwarranted, arbitrary and capricious," Oakland Mills Principal Marshall Peterson said in a telephone interview.

The Howard County school board voted unanimously yesterday to reinstate the former athletic director of Oakland Mills High School in Columbia, who was suspended after he was implicated in a grade-changing scandal that forced the football team to forfeit a playoff game and its seven regular-season victories. In making its decision, the school board rejected the recommendation of John R. O'Rourke, then superintendent, that Kenneth O. Hovet Jr., who also coached the football team, be fired.

The Howard County school board voted unanimously yesterday to reinstate the former athletic director of Oakland Mills High School in Columbia, who was suspended after he was implicated in a grade-changing scandal that forced the football team to forfeit a playoff game and its seven regular-season victories. In making its decision, the school board rejected the recommendation of John R. O'Rourke, then superintendent, that Kenneth O. Hovet Jr., who also coached the football team, be fired.

A high school football coach who could be fired as the result of a grade-changing scandal appeared before a Howard County circuit judge yesterday to argue for the release of papers he said he needs to retain his job. "These documents are critical," said Thomas R. Bundy III, attorney for Oakland Mills High School coach Kenneth O. Hovet Jr., who filed a lawsuit against the office of the Howard County schools superintendent last month alleging he was being...

With headlines declaring that Columbia's Oakland Mills High was changing its colors, getting a Subway sandwich shop in the cafeteria and adding badminton to its sports lineup, the school's latest student newspaper appeared to scoop everyone, including major media. The news sent a Board of Education member into a minor panic - until she turned to Page 5 and was let in on the joke: It was an April Fools' Day edition. "You got me," Courtney Watson, the school board chairman, wrote in an e-mail to The Scroll's staff Sunday night after picking up the paper.