After working for more than a year to review 35 books because a few parents wanted them removed from school libraries, the Frederick County Public Schools decided it would remove one book. Two additional books will be removed from library circulation at the middle school level. One book on the original complaint list was previously removed because of questions about its veracity. And that is all.

The Orioles’ stadium lease extension was expiring in less than four weeks, and Gov. Wes Moore was moving quickly on a long-term lease to resolve a nagging issue that was becoming a political liability. On the morning of Dec. 8, the governor launched a plan in which the Maryland Stadium Authority would summon board members to a special meeting the following Tuesday to approve a freshly negotiated agreement with the team that his administration believed improved upon an earlier, nonbinding proposal.

Greenbury Point is a beautiful peninsula, stretching out to the Chesapeake Bay between the Severn River and Whitehall Bay. You can spot it just south of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge by its three “Eiffel Towers,” relics of a radio transmission network for Navy submarines during the Cold War. And you can recognize it as one of a handful of spots on the map that are key to expanded public access to the bay near Annapolis. It is, to stretch a sports metaphor to the breaking point, a fairway to the Chesapeake.

I’m not yet a year and a half into my career. It will be 2 1/2 years until I lose my first student, my first lovely, to bullets. I’ll be told I’m lucky it took that long. It is December 2012, and on this particular Friday morning, my lovelies and I are huddled in the corner of my classroom. In a few years, when we do this, it will be because we’re hiding — as far away from the door as we can, silent and still. When that eventually happens, every time I will feign calm, and every time, because I never know if it’s a drill or a disaster, I will text my family.

The Howard County Public School System promoted the district’s chief academic officer, William Barnes, on Thursday to be the acting superintendent of the school system. Barnes has been with HCPSS for 15 years and served as the academic officer since July 2017. In that role, he oversaw curriculum and instruction, special education and student services. Barnes was previously director of secondary and pre-K–12 curricular programs, and coordinator of secondary mathematics. Before moving to Howard County schools, he was a team leader and teacher in Baltimore County. He graduated from Towson University in 1995 and earned a bachelor’s degree in math.

 

A blue-ribbon transportation panel will ask lawmakers to consider bolstering the state’s flagging Transportation Trust Fund by raising tolls and imposing new or increased vehicle registration fees. The 31-member Transportation Revenue and Infrastructure Committee’s interim report is more of a menu of options for lawmakers to consider than a series of prescriptions.b “We’ve covered a lot of territory in a period of time,” said Frank Principe, who chairs the commission. “We also understand there’s a lot more to dig into and I don’t take that lightly. We certainly want to provide as much helpful input that we can in terms of trying to move these kinds of topics and conversations forward.”

 

Members of Maryland’s congressional delegation have successfully blocked the U.S. Naval Academy Athletic Association from building a second golf course on Greenbury Point. The announcement comes on the heels of Congress passing the final version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act Thursday morning. The provisions for protecting the Greenbury Point Conservation Area contain even stronger language than the draft legislation passed by the Senate earlier this year and make it nearly impossible to deforest the 231-acre peninsula extending out into the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River.

The appeal of a decision by an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge upholding the rejection of an early voting site in Hancock could be heard in early February, according to the attorney representing the Washington County Board of Elections. The local board is not named in the suit, which was filed against state elections officials after the Maryland State Board of Elections formally rejected the site during an emergency meeting Nov. 3. That meeting came after the state board declined to approve the site at its Oct. 26 meeting.

If current economic trends and spending levels continue, Baltimore could face a cumulative budget shortfall of $1.8 billion over the next decade. That was the sobering message city finance officials gave to City Council members at a budget hearing Thursday. “That’s a scary picture,” Council President Nick Mosby said, looking at a chart depicting how the projected deficit could balloon between now and 2034.

Frederick will receive $1 million from the state to help develop and design the proposed site of a hotel and conference center along Carroll Creek. The grant from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development was announced Thursday as part of more than $63 million in funds for revitalization. The money will be used for site planning, engineering, grading, and necessary demolition for the hotel site at the corner of East Patrick and Carroll streets downtown, Richard Griffin, the city’s economic development director, said in an interview Thursday.