Principal

From John Cassidy's "Why Won't Mitt Romney Release More Tax Returns?" at newyorker.com: "The principal that if your father also ran for President, and released twelve years of tax returns, then you can release just two and claim the family average is a respectable seven years?"                 Yes, at The New Yorker 's website. Principle is the word for a tenet, a rule, a standard. Principal as a noun is either a main participant or the amount of a loan on which interest is calculated.

A group of Chesapeake High School alumni have banded together to create a scholarship fund in memory of William Norman, the school's long-retired first principal, who was killed this month in Florida. The scholarship, which will be called the Dr. William H. Norman Endowment Fund, is in the early planning stages and will be supported entirely by alumni, at least to start. The group thought helping students afford higher education would be the best way to memorialize the former administrator.

Davie, FLA -- The body of murder victim William Norman was to be shipped today to his native Maryland, where former students and colleagues remembered him as a beloved high school principal with the Anne Arundel County public schools. Scholarship funds in Norman's name are being set up, and plans are underway for memorial ceremonies, according to former student Kimberly Smith. "He was a gentle giant," said Smith, who attended Chesapeake High School in Pasadena in the early 1980s when Norman was principal.

William Norman, the retired first principal of Chesapeake High School in Pasadena, was found slain in a canal in Davie, Fla., and police said they have charged two teenagers with premeditated murder in his death. Norman, 76, of Tampa, worked for 28 years in the Anne Arundel County Public Schools system, serving as Chesapeake's principal from 1976 to 1983. The school auditorium is named for him. He retired in 1989 as director of fiscal services, school officials said. Two men, one of whom rented a house in Tamarac that Norman owned, were charged, according to police.

Attorneys representing the two Baltimore principals who were recommended for reinstatement last month, after they were dismissed amid suspicion that their school had cheated on state tests , will present their case before the city school board on Tuesday. The board will decide whether to uphold the decisions of two independent hearing officers, who determined that the school system's investigation into test-tampering allegations at Abbottston Elementary School was fundamentally flawed and based on little evidence; or to uphold city schools CEO Andres Alonso's decision to dismiss the principals after the school's scores dropped drastically in 2010 from 100 percent proficiency marks the year prior, and other school system analyses indicated that adults had tampered with tests.

Steven Robert Hardy, a Harford County public school educator whose career spanned more than four decades, died June 13 of cancer at his Bel Air home. He was 64. The son of a real estate salesman and a homemaker, Mr. Hardy was born and raised in Havre de Grace. After graduating from Havre de Grace High School in 1965, he earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education in 1969 from what is now Towson University. He completed his graduate studies in education administration at Morgan State University and had earned a master's degree from Loyola University Maryland.

Baltimore County principals are protesting a new financial disclosure form that is the most detailed of any required in the region, setting up a debate over how much personal information some school officials should have to divulge to the public. Principals were told last spring that they must fill out a 14-page financial disclosure form that is the same as that required of school board members, the superintendent and other officials who make decisions about purchases. "We feel it is too intrusive," said Tom Evans, principal of Eastern Technical High School.

Dr. Evelyn P. Valentine, a veteran Baltimore public school educator who was founder of the Pasteur Center for Strategic Management Ltd., died Thursday of heart disease at her Northeast Baltimore home. She was 77. The daughter of a furniture maker and a homemaker, Evelyn Pasteur was born and raised in Beaufort, N.C., where she graduated from Queen Street High School. She was the eldest of 15 children. She started attending school when she was 4, and entered college at 15. She was 19 when she landed her first teaching job. "I had to hurry and get out of the way because there were so many behind me," she told the old Sunday Sun Magazine in a 1975 interview, explaining that her brothers and sisters who were out of college helped those who were still studying for their degrees.

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.

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.