Planting a Tree, a Second Term for Xie, Books for Free

I've moaned and groaned so much about the all the miserable, gloomy weather that we've had. So it's only fitting that I should give Mother Nature some props for today.

It's beautiful outside! Dare I say nearly perfect? So nice, in fact, that you should stop reading "The Rundown" and go outside and frolic. (Or at least take the laptop or smartphone outside and frolic while you read. Speaking of smartphones, . More here at Rockville Patch on that front tomorrow.)

Sometimes the job of a journalist and the weather lines up nicely and you're especially grateful that you don't work in a cube farm. I covered Rockville's Arbor Day tree-planting ceremony at the District Courthouse in Town Center this afternoon. Under brilliant blue skies, County Executive Ike Leggett joined Mayor Phyllis Marcuccio, Councilman Piotr Gajewski, city forester Wayne Noll and students from  (who recited a poem and sang a song) in planting a willow oak. It replaces a stately 150-year-old maple that had rotted, forcing the city to remove it last summer. Check Rockville Patch later for more photos and video of the ceremony.

And now, (in the voice of my father) it's the "go outside and get the stink blown off you" edition of "The Rundown":

• Alan Xie on Wednesday became the second student in history to be re-elected as the student member of the Montgomery County Board of Education. Xie, a junior at , received more than 72 percent of the vote by county secondary school students, defeating Hal Zeitlin, a junior at . Of the 76,055 students eligible to cast ballots, 64,092 (about 84 percent) did so. A student board member was first elected for the 1978-1979 school year. Sagar Sanghvi of was the first student to serve two terms on the board, from 2003 to 2005. (Must be something in the water at those Rockville schools that says "re-election.")
• Speaking of the county school board, on Tuesday the board released an update on its search for the next schools superintendent (which is a lot like the search for the next "American Idol", only with fewer off-key pop performances—and, presumably, board President Chris Barclay doesn't refer to the candidates as "dawg"). In March, the board reviewed applications from 30 candidates, according to a news release. The board is selecting "a limited group of candidates" for interviews this month and will then select up to three finalists for interviews with a community committee, the release said. Using input from the committee and after a second round of interviews with each finalist, the board hopes to have a preferred candidate "well in advance" of July, when Superintendent Jerry Weast's contract expires, the release said. For more, go to the Superintendent Search page on the Montgomery County Public Schools Web site.
• Back to student news for a moment: Two students from Rockville were recently elected to the national board of directors for Young Judaea, the Zionist youth movement of Hadassah, the organization announced in a news release. Aviva Weinstein, a junior at the in Rockville, was elected as educational programmer for third grade through eighth grade, a position she currently fulfills for Maryland Young Judaea. Frances Lasday, a junior at , is the new social action programmer, a position she currently fulfills for Maryland Young Judaea. The board, known in Hebrew as a “mazkirut," provides peer leadership and guides regional activities, summer camps and Israel programs for the organization, which provides social and educational activities for students to "sharpen their senses of Jewish and Zionist identity," according to the organization's Web site. The incoming board members will begin their year-long terms in August.
• The is accepting book donations through tomorrow for its annual Recycle Reduce Reuse: Community Book Swap, which will be held from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday.
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