When Maureen E. Walsh, Bryn Mawr School's new headmistress, moved to Baltimore last summer, her two young children discovered the magic of a new toy - the remote-control garage door opener.

It wasn't long, however, before the novelty wore off. Walsh and her family had too many other changes to adjust to - a new house, a new city and a new school - after relocating from Brooklyn, N.Y.

They weren't the only ones coping with lifestyle changes. Four other top educators hired to replace heads of private schools who left last year are also getting settled.

"I arrived in July and was anxious for the faculty and girls to get here so the school would come to life," said Nancy Eisenberg, 52, who left Texas to be the head of school at St. Paul's School for Girls in Brooklandville. "This is all new to me: a new job, a new city and a new culture."

The move has also brought her closer to her daughter, a student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

"She moved 1,400 miles away to go to college. Now I'm only two hours from her," Eisenberg said. "But I only go when I'm invited."

While they haven't made any major changes at the schools, Walsh and Eisenberg have been making their presence felt.

Eisenberg moved her office from the main floor administrative wing to the end of a second-floor hallway near upper school classrooms to be closer to the students.

Eisenberg, who worked for 16 years at a private high school for girls in Houston, set up a round table in her new office where students congregate. She also keeps a filled candy jar on an office shelf - an open secret at the school, which has an enrollment of 438 girls.

"I want to work to keep the feeling of a small school," she said.

Walsh, 46, took a different tack. She wanted to inject a sense of caring among the 800 girls at Bryn Mawr in North Baltimore, so she asked that students in the lower grades stand to honor the seniors at assemblies.

Walsh, who moved here after 16 years as an administrator at a private school in Brooklyn, said one of her priorities is to update Bryn Mawr's facilities.

"We need a new classroom building that would house the middle school and a new library," she said.

Thomas J. Reid, 51, the interim head of St. Paul's School, will become the permanent headmaster in July; he was named to the post last week. The school shares an 81-acre campus with St. Paul's School for Girls.

A headmaster for 14 years at a private day school in Long Island, Reid has been living on campus with his wife since they arrived last July. They have no plans to move.

"It seems very natural to us to be on campus," said Reid, who spent nine years living on the campus of a boarding school in Connecticut.

Reid now lives closer to his daughter, a teacher at the Gilman School in North Baltimore.

He oversees the lower school, which is coeducational and has pupils from pre-kindergarten through fourth grade, and the middle and upper schools, which enroll only boys in fifth through 12th grade. The schools have about 860 students.

He will help oversee a $1.2 million capital project that will renovate the school's three lower playing fields and prepare for an evaluation by the Association of Independent Maryland Schools, which reviews all its member schools every 10 years.

Lila B. Lohr, 57, the new interim head of Friends School in North Baltimore, is a familiar face in the private school community. A native of Baltimore and a graduate of Garrison Forest School in Owings Mills, Lohr has spent more than three decades working in private schools.

She started her career at Bryn Mawr, then became headmistress at St. Paul's School for Girls. She left St. Paul's in 1995 to head Princeton Day School in Princeton, N.J., but has maintained a home in Baltimore.

While at Friends, Lohr will be overseeing construction of a $1 million alumni center on campus and helping with a capital campaign that will fund construction of a middle school and renovation of the upper school science and math facility. Friends is a coeducational Quaker day school with about 1,000 students.

Henry Payson "Peter" Briggs Jr., 70, a seasoned interim headmaster, is spending the year at St. Timothy's School for Girls in Stevenson while the board of trustees searches for a permanent replacement.

An educator for more than four decades, Briggs came to St. Timothy's from Fort Worth, Texas, where he served for a year as interim headmaster at a day school. He has spent the past few years working as an interim head of school at locations from California to Virginia. It's a good way to see the country, he says.

He frequently returns to Cincinnati, which he considers home, to visit his family, including two grandchildren who attend a private school where he was once headmaster.

Briggs' goal is to increase enrollment, which has slipped in the last few years. He also is overseeing construction of a $5.6 million athletic complex, scheduled for completion by fall 2003. St. Timothy's, a boarding school that also accepts day students, has an enrollment of 88 girls in ninth through 12th grades.

For some administrators, the next year will be spent observing how their institutions work.

"Each school has its very own culture and traditions," Eisenberg said, "so I'm spending the year listening and learning."