Stop the Presses for Blooming Love, a Dress and T-shirts.

Unlikely Spot for Romance

Eileen Casey, superintendent in Monticello, N.Y., and Tom Leek, a former education reporter, culminated their romance in the same place it started--at a statewide school boards convention.

The couple married last fall, a few days before the New York State School Boards Association's annual conference in Rochester, where they completed their honeymoon. Casey and Leek first dated at the 1998 NYSSBA convention when he was then covering for the Middletown Times Herald-Record. Casey had encouraged him to attend for personal growth.

The two dined together at the convention and, Leek reports, the romance blossomed from there.

Leek now works as a communications specialist with the Capital Region Board of Cooperative Educational Services, assigned to the Orange County, N.Y., schools, not far from Monticello.

News Off the Rack

Proving one again that the news media applies vastly different criteria based on gender when it comes to covering public officials, The Baltimore Sun recently devoted a 529-word news story to the fashion preferences of Carol Parham, superintendent in Anne Arundel County, Md.

The article, titled "More Than Suited for the Job," detailed how the eighth-year superintendent has added an eclectic element to her wardrobe after years of mostly wearing suits.

We're still waiting for the newspaper's in-depth probe into the shopping preferences of Parham's male colleagues in the newspaper's coverage area.

Bathroom Humor

The following newspaper correction appears on a poster in a men's bathroom at the Newseum in Arlington, Va., part of a collection of classic gaffes:

"An article in yesterday's edition incorrectly described T-Shirt Appreciation Day at school. Actually, it was Teacher Appreciation Day."

A Shining Light

Three months into her first principalship, Mary A. King was helping Coppell High School near Dallas, Texas, host its biggest football rival at Coppell's newly opened football stadium. The opening ceremony and the first three quarters had gone well when King was approached by a distressed member of the school's booster club.

The electrical circuits for the snack bar had blown a fuse from an appliance overload. "No problem," replied King, who scampered down from the stands to the electrical closet, the booster member in tow.

Instead of waiting for the principal's directions, the booster immediately started flipping toggle switches, plunging the entire stadium in darkness.

King, now director of high schools for the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals, says she learned two lessons from the episode: (1) an unscheduled 15-minute timeout in the middle of a hotly contested high school football game is never a good idea, and (2) lighted football fields need well-marked toggle switches.

Watch Your Manners

"Table manners won't be considered." -- Anthony Tesorio, school board president in Auburn, N.Y., after deciding that the eight-member school board would take each of its two finalists for the vacant superintendency out for dinner for more informal fact-finding.

A Super Sub

Although he retired in December as superintendent of the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District near Dallas, Jim Thompson continues to spend some days in the classroom, interpreting assignment sheets left by absent teachers and distributing hall passes.

Thompson is fulfilling a promise he made prior to retiring to substitute for a day for any teacher or administrator who pledged at least $200 to the district's nonprofit education foundation. Because his gesture attracted nearly 40 donations, too many to schedule during his final months on the job, he is now paying off.

Thompson's substitute assignments have included a day teaching kindergarten and a day in a drama classroom where he helped students apply makeup for pantomime presentations. Thompson earlier had been an English teacher.

Home for a Cat

Add "wildlife expert" to the list of duties carried out by Doug Ackles, superintendent in St. Paul, Neb., about 166 miles west of Omaha.

After a mountain lion was killed by local police just outside the district's high school, Ackles was asked for permission to mount the animal inside the school's new library, which it shares with the community. Ackles, acknowledging he had received several private donations to support the project, approved the mounting, after the state Fish and Game Department offered its blessing.

The lion will be on display as a temporary exhibit.

How appropriate for a high school that has as its nickname the Wildcats.