Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Baltimore, MD
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Around Maryland

Captured in a metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia primary school, this photograph depicts a typical classroom scene, where an audience of school children were seated on the floor before a teacher at the front of the room, who was reading an illustrated storybook, during one of the scheduled classroom sessions. Assisting the instructor were two female students to her left, and a male student on her right, who was holding up the book, while the seated classmates were raising their hands to answer questions related to the story just read.
‘Crumbling Schools’: Lawmaker links poor Baltimore school conditions to lack of state funding

A state lawmaker who represents Baltimore City and oversees K-12 education funding said she wants her colleagues to visit Baltimore City Public Schools campuses to see the conditions of the buildings. Baltimore City Delegate Stephanie Smith, D-District 45, agrees that the issue is funding and said some people need to see it to believe it. “I just think we have to continue to make the case to our colleagues that our students are going to schools they wouldn’t even want their pets to enter,” Smith told 11 News Investigates.

Read More: WBALTV
She’s the only Black woman leading a state military. Her focus is on the future

She was born and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to “a family who was about service.” Major Gen. Janeen Birckhead is the 31st Adjutant General for the state of Maryland and is currently the only Black woman in the country to lead a state military. “I have been fortunate in my positions along the way to really be in good units with good mentors and leaders who have been able to give me some really good guidance about what steps to take next and where to go,” Birckhead told WTOP.

 

Read More: WTOP
Baltimore’s Penn Station emerging from its wrappings

The scaffolding has come off much of Pennsylvania Station, revealing the finely articulated facade that now shines in the March sunlight. It was not always like this. For decades the station’s big windows seemed to be falling apart and the 1911 stone work needed strengthening and repointing. It’s worth a trip to the Station North neighborhood just to take in this visual change that was more than two years in the making.

 

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Contested East Towson affordable housing proposal can move forward, court says

A disputed affordable housing development in East Towson that has for years divided neighbors over its legality received additional approval this week from a panel of appellate judges to move forward. Developer Red Maple Place Limited, which acquired two parcels of Baltimore County land in 2018 and proposed using one of them to build a four-story, 56-unit affordable housing apartment complex, had its plans affirmed by the three-judge panel of the Appellate Court of Maryland in a decision handed down Thursday.

Baltimore has a machine gun problem

Two men, holding seemingly identical Glock handguns, stand side-by-side in front of a silhouette-shaped target at an indoor shooting range. They aim their guns and open fire. The man on the left squeezes the trigger 15 times, emptying his clip in a few seconds. The person on the right was able to empty one clip, reload, and empty another in the time it took the other to finish shooting. He only had to squeeze the trigger twice, one time for each magazine. The gun fired so rapidly it sounded like it was jet-fueled.

‘Queer elders’ reflect on personal experiences, LGTBQ+ history in Fredrick

The Frederick Center hosted a panel on queer history in Frederick Sunday afternoon, with panelists moving a packed room in the C. Burr Artz Public Library to tears. “Thank you for creating the world we have today that [children] can come out at the age of 13, and have their whole teenage years and adolescence ahead of them,” one mom in the audience, who said her child is queer, told the panelists.

University of Maryland lifts Greek life suspension, court documents detail hazing allegations

The University of Maryland College Park on Friday lifted a blanket suspension on most fraternities and sororities and a ban on their social activities involving alcohol and new recruitment. The campus update came as many students left for Spring Break and as the school faced a new lawsuit over the suspension. The university has not detailed exact allegations, but said five chapters remain under investigation.

 

 

Read More: CBS Baltimore
$1.3 million goes to Monifa McKnight in split with Montgomery Co. schools

The former superintendent of public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, is receiving $1.3 million as part of her separation agreement with the school board. Monifa McKnight also agreed not to sue the school board over anything that occurred before she signed the deal. Last month, McKnight said she was stepping down from her post after she “mutually agreed to separate” with the school board.

 

Read More: WTOP
Electric morning
New scorecard rates nation’s grid managers on connecting renewables

Across the country, electric demand is growing and could explode if green goals like electrifying home heating, industry and transportation come to fruition. At the same time, many states, utilities and businesses have pledged to decarbonize, helping push older coal and gas power plants that have struggled to stay economically competitive into retirement. Yet in the queues run by the organizations that manage the electric grid in much of the nation, more than 2 million megawatts of potential new power sources, chiefly solar, wind and batteries, are languishing, awaiting interconnection studies.

County Council, aldermen discuss affordable housing ideas

Frederick County and the city of Frederick should look at how to make existing homes cheaper to buy, to help ease the problem of affordable housing in the county, a city alderwoman said Wednesday. Alderwoman Donna Kuzemchak said during a meeting between the aldermen and the Frederick County Council that making it easier for people to buy current houses would help more than for the county or municipalities to waive fees on new construction.

The Morning Rundown

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