School Superintendent

Baltimore County will be just one of a number of large school districts in the nation and several in Maryland looking for new leaders this year, but those familiar with the process said that despite the competition, the county will be attractive to many applicants. Superintendent Joe A. Hairston told The Baltimore Sun in an email Thursday afternoon that he planned not to seek another contract after June 30. He has not informed the school board of the decision, but school board President Lawrence Schmidt said the board will conduct a national search that will start soon.

Here we go again. Our dear mayor and the clowns on the city school board are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their search for the replacement to schools CEO Andrés Alonso. Why not look at the current assistant chief, Tisha Edwards, who I'm sure is more than capable to be the new school superintendent. She has the experience and knowledge of the entire school system. We do not have the money to spend on searching all over the country for a person. Keep the money here.

An Air Force squadron commander who grew up in Middle River and graduated from Baltimore County public schools is among those who have applied to be the school system's next superintendent. Timothy T. Tenne, 42, has no experience in education but said he believes the skills he developed in the Air Force will transfer to running a large organization such as the school system. Most recently, Tenne was a leader who helped oversee the NATO Air Operations Center's air mobility in Italy during the conflict in Libya.

Monday, May 6, 2013 Dear City Schools Partners and Friends, I am writing to you today to let you know that at the end of the current school year, I will retire and leave Baltimore City Public Schools and this great city to return to my home in New Jersey to care for my aging parents and begin an academic position at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. It has not been an easy decision, because what we have accomplished together in recent years has been both important and extremely gratifying to me, professionally and personally.

Carroll County's high scores in the school performance tests are not the good news some have touted them to be, county school Superintendent R. Edward Shilling told a group of business leaders yesterday.In fact, Mr. Shilling chastised business leaders and teachers at the county Economic Development Commission meeting for not supporting school reforms based on a list of standards students are expected to meet by the time they graduate from high school."I wouldn't say we are the best school system in the state," he said, referring to a recent headline in a local newspaper.

A panel analyzing how the Anne Arundel County school system responded to the 1989 allegations that Ronald W. Price had a sexual relationship with one of his Northeast High students sent its draft report yesterday to the state school superintendent and the Anne Arundel County state's attorney.Ron Peiffer, a spokesman for the state Board of Education, confirmed yesterday that the report had been delivered, but said its contents won't be made public until after State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee has reviewed the material.

Maxine B. Myers, a homemaker and active churchwoman, died July 21 of chronic congestive heart failure at the Cromwell Center in Towson. The longtime Parkton resident was 83. The daughter of a streetcar motorman and a teacher, the former Maxine White Bowen was born in Baltimore and raised on Walbrook Avenue. After graduating from Western High School in 1945, she went to work as a clerk for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, until her marriage in 1952 to Franklin L. Myers, a postal carrier.

The Harford County school system started rebuilding morale within its unhappy ranks yesterday as Jackie Haas, a respected, veteran educator, took on the role of becoming the interim school superintendent.She officially begins Monday but already is trying to absorb as much as she can from her former boss, Jeffery N. Grotsky, whose tumultuous tenure as Harford school chief ends Friday.The Harford County school board announced Monday that it had reached an agreement with Grotsky to end his four-year contract after 20 months of service, citing irreconcilable differences in management styles.

School Superintendent Carol S. Parham wants to let citizens' groups suggest the best way to redraw the boundaries for two school feeder systems.Usually, the superintendent makes boundary recommendations to the school board at the first board meeting in December.Instead, Dr. Parham will ask the board at today's meeting to consider creating two advisory panels.Thomas W. Rhoades, director of program planning, said the superintendent took the approach because the administration hopes to draw community members into the redistricting process.

When Lillian Gonzalez started out in public education 20 years ago, she began in a classroom in the South Bronx teaching mentally retarded children. Since then, she has built a career on helping students with special needs -- the developmentally disabled, those who don't speak English, the homeless, children born to drug-addicted mothers.It is a journey that brought her to the Washington public school system 2 1/2 years ago, to a job in which she has overseen the delivery of services to special education and bilingual students, as well managing adult and community education.

Dallas Dance has been superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools for less than half an academic year, but he is proving himself a quick study. The $1.3 billion budget he has proposed for the next fiscal year strikes the kind of balance that county leaders generally love best: progress with penny-pinching. The usual penurious critics may latch onto the fact that he is seeking a substantial budget increase - $41.9 million, or 3.3 percent - at a time of continued economic challenges for the county (including the closing of the Sparrows Point steel mill)

Last night, I presented a $1.3 billion operating budget proposal for Baltimore County Public Schools for fiscal 2014. Due to financial limitations, the proposed budget does not meet all of our needs, but it provides a good foundation related to our three budget priorities: managing continued growth in student enrollment; raising the bar and closing gaps in student academic achievement; and investing in our future by strengthening our infrastructure....

Voters in Howard County elected two incumbents and a first-time challenger to the school board on Tuesday. Incumbent Janet Siddiqui took the top spot, followed by first-time candidate Ann De Lacy and fellow incumbent Ellen Giles. Siddiqui said she was "very pleased and very humbled. " "It's been a long campaign, but it's the children in Howard County, the parents and the community that won tonight," she said. "I'm going to continue to do my work on the board for the next four years, continue to look at ways to eliminate the achievement gap and move forward.

Every day, more than 106,000 students cross the thresholds onto Baltimore County's school campuses and into our school buildings, and we assume responsibility not just for their education but also for their safety. In the first three weeks of this school year, two separate gun-related incidents have shaken our community and raised questions about the security of our schools. For the last seven school years combined, fewer than nine students have been caught with guns in our schools.

Dallas Dance knew a little of what the Perry Hall High School students were going through Monday after a student was critically wounded in the cafeteria by another student. His senior year at Armstrong High School in Richmond, Va., a 14-year-old student had opened fire with a pistol in a hallway, wounding two adults as students took exams. No one prepares superintendents for first days like this, but Baltimore County's new superintendent said school systems always prepare for such acts of violence.

Baltimore County school Superintendent Dallas Dance is recommending the county's only charter school be given two more years to improve its sagging performance. The school board will take a vote on whether to give Imagine Discovery a two-year extension of its charter on Aug. 21. The board has approved a one-year extension, but Dance said another year is needed in order to see if the school can collaborate with the school system and make improvements. Imagine Discovery Public Charter School, started in 2008, underperforms schools in its area of the county and the school district as a whole.

When Leonard M. Britton was appointed Los Angeles' new school superintendent in 1987, no outsider had held that post for almost 40 years.It proved to be a brief interlude.Three turbulent years after assuming the leadership of the nation's second-largest school system -- years of vitriolic confrontations with the teachers union and evaporating state financial support -- Dr. Britton abruptly announced that he had had enough.In short order, Los Angeles returned to the norm and replaced him with a career bureaucrat from within the school system.

New Howard school superintendent Renee Foose has named a deputy superintendent of operations, as part of an effort to divvy up duties held by deputy superintendent Mamie Perkins, who retired last week. Howard County schools chief operating officer Ray Brown has been named the school system's deputy superintendent of operations. He will also oversee the school system's state-mandated Bridge to Excellence plan and its strategic planning. School system chief of staff Sue Mascaro will now be responsible for policy management and charter schools, and chief academic officer Linda Wise will now head the school system's international partnerships.

Former Baltimore County school superintendent Joe A. Hairston signed employment contracts before he retired with two top aides that would pay them nearly a half-million dollars in severance if his successor fired them when bringing in his own leadership team. Dallas Dance, the new superintendent, sought to replace those employees when he took over this month and posted job openings for an assistant superintendent of human resources and chief of communications. And instead of letting them go - and paying a total of $459,853 and the cost of their benefits - Dance has reassigned them.