School Superintendent

The Baltimore County school board, which has been criticized in the past two years for failing to listen to complaints from the public, has pledged to seek advice on the hiring of the next superintendent from an array of interests in the community. The school board signed a contract this week with a national search firm to help choose a new superintendent. School board President Lawrence Schmidt said Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates was chosen in part because it has a good record of soliciting views from different groups.

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.

Baltimore County schools Superintendent Joe A. Hairston said Thursday that he does not plan to seek another contract when his current four-year deal expires in June. "I have always said that I would not seek another term," Hairston wrote in an email to The Baltimore Sun. "Twelve years is a tremendous run for any superintendent. " Hairston has been superintendent of the 26th-largest school district in the country since 2000. School board President Lawrence Schmidt said Hairston has not informed the board of his decision.

The Maryland State Board of Education should step in to resolve the impasse on the county school board before the latter body ceases to function altogether. A certain degree of tension on any elected body is to be expected, even desired. However, the animosity between Allen Dyer and some of his fellow board members has become personal and counterproductive. Last week, the conflict took the board to a new level of dysfunction as chairwoman Janet Siddiqui abruptly suspended its Sept.

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 Maryland state school board has chosen an education department official and former local school superintendent as the temporary replacement for Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, who will retire this month. Although Bernard J. Sadusky, the former superintendent of Queen Anne's County, could be in the job for only months, he is likely to have significant influence over a series of decisions on sensitive issues, including the new teacher evaluation system that factors in student performance.

The announcement that Maryland schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick will retire in June after 20 years on the job marks a watershed for public education in the state, whose history could fairly be divided into two eras — before and after Ms. Grasmick. Her extraordinary leadership raised the bar on what was possible for schools across the state and won Maryland national recognition as an education powerhouse. She's been called "the heart and soul" of Maryland schools. Whoever succeeds her will have big shoes to fill.

Robert William Armacost, who staged antique shows in Hunt Valley and Annapolis and was a former Baltimore City Public Schools deputy superintendent, died of an apparent heart attack Feb. 14 at his Roland Park home. He was 74. Born in Baltimore and raised in Woodlawn, he was the son of physician Joshua Armacost. He was a 1955 graduate of Milford Mill High School and earned a degree at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. He was an active alumnus and donor. He taught at Essex Elementary School and later taught English at Lansdowne High School.