At the tail-end of a Baltimore summer marked by occasional scorching heat, several shuttered swimming pools and kids sneaking into locked facilities, City Council members urged parks officials to ensure that repairs don’t interrupt swim season next year. Officials from Baltimore City Recreation and Parks gathered Wednesday before City Council for questioning over closures at three popular spots this summer: Clifton Park’s pool experienced sporadic maintenance issues; Cherry Hill’s outdoor pool remains under renovation; and persistent flooding overwhelmed Patterson Park’s pool in early July, preventing it from opening.

Education does not end when the dismissal bell rings. Learning can and must continue when children are at home. Frederick County Public Schools students in grades three through eight improved on math exams last year, and performed among the best school systems in the state — though still below pre-pandemic levels. On the Algebra I test for the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP), 26% of FCPS students earned a proficiency score, which is the fifth highest in the state and significantly better than the statewide average of 17%.

“So do you think that some time this school year, you’ll want to walk by yourself?” I asked my kid. We were unpacking Amazon boxes of notebook paper and No. 2 pencils, and as I envisioned hauling them down to the school building where he’s going to be starting fourth grade today, I suddenly thought, “What if he doesn’t need me to walk him with him anymore?” Then: “What if he doesn’t need me anymore?”

The word futuristic is defined as an “imagined” future. Which is an upbeat way, as schools get ready to reopen, to view the nationwide future of public education. The alternative to an imagined future is the somber present. Public schools are widely viewed as facing a bleak future. Learning loss from the pandemic is getting worse not better; even before the pandemic, nearly 70 percent of schoolchildren were below proficiency in literacy. There’s a growing loss of faith in the political possibility of true education reform.

 

You can now track packages on their way to your front door, and you can your track car keys when you misplace them. Starting this year, some Howard County parents will be able to track their child’s school bus. It’s one of many tech-supported features that Zūm, a Silicon Valley-based company, hopes can transform student transportation in Maryland and beyond. “It’s amazing to see how in Howard County it [student transportation] is even more antiquated than we have seen in other districts, so our goal is to modernize that,” said chief operating officer Vivek Garg, who co-founded the company with his sister and its CEO, Ritu Narayan.

The Washington County Commissioners sent a proposal to update the definition of a convenience store in the county’s zoning ordinance back to the Planning Commission after a lengthy public hearing Tuesday. The proposed zoning text amendments would change the definition of a convenience store to eliminate the size restriction, which is currently 5,000 square feet — including areas for gas pumps. That restriction “is a big problem,” civil engineer Fred Frederick, president of Frederick, Seibert and Associates, told the commissioners.

The longtime owner of a 1960s-era garden apartment complex in downtown Bethesda has proposed to redevelop it as a new, much denser apartment tower, adding to a growing trend of similar residential projects in the area. A partnership of the Kossow and Gelman families — of Kossow Management Corp. and The Gelman Cos., both real estate firms — has owned the 84-unit, roughly 72,000-square-foot Battery Lane Apartments at 4861 Battery Lane since 1984.

Baltimore entrepreneur Michael Saunders can’t wait to open Matriarch Coffee in a long-vacant space in Harborplace’s Pratt Street Pavilion this fall — and hopes the shop will be part of the beleaguered retail center’s future. Saunders and his partners have entered a deal to open the coffee shop in October in 600 square feet of the former M&S Grill space on the first floor of the nearly vacant pavilion. MCB Real Estate, which is redeveloping Harborplace, has a licensing deal with Matriarch, a Baltimore County coffee roaster that uses beans from the African country of Rwanda.

It was around midday that Dallis Glover walked along North Eutaw Street, just past Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore, carrying a 25-ounce can of Natural Ice beer in late June. Glover, 59, was a block from his home in the Paca House Apartments, which provides supportive housing for residents with low incomes. He had quit his job while grieving the recent deaths of his mother and fiancee, and found himself relying on alcohol to dull his pain.

After backing out of a proposed project near Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis, the Chesapeake Conservancy has purchased a property in downtown Annapolis to serve as its new office. The office space at 1212 West St., formerly the Maryland Municipal League building, was purchased for $2.5 million by the conservancy via a donation from local philanthropists James and Sylvia Earl.