Report: Howard County Schools Superintendent to Step Down by 2012

Already in a battle with cancer, Howard County Schools Superintendent Sydney L. Cousin said that further health problems will force him to step down no later than next summer, according to The Baltimore Sun.

"My health and condition will determine whether I stay long-term, and long-term for me is June 2012, when my contract is up,” Cousin told The Sun. “I can say categorically that I will not go beyond that.”

Cousin, 65, has been under treatment for Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. He went on medical leave in early January and returned to work in April.

That medical leave was not due to cancer, however, but because he’s also confronting a neurological condition that caused him to pass out while on vacation in December, he told The Sun.

“He was flown home and ultimately diagnosed with a neurological condition that has affected his memory and required him to receive physical, occupational and speech therapy,” the article reported.

He continues to receive chemotherapy treatments for his lymphoma, The Sun said.

Cousin has been with the Howard County Public School system since 1987, when he was hired as director of school construction and planning. Prior to that he had been a junior high history teacher in Baltimore for three years beginning in 1967, and then had worked in other roles for the Baltimore city government and city school system.

Cousin was employed in several administrative positions in the Howard County school system, leaving in July 2003 but returning just eight months later, in March 2004, to become interim superintendent. That "interim" tag was soon dropped. He is in his second, four-year term as superintendent.