Around Maryland

Maryland courts have run out of money to pay for indigent people charged with crimes to be released on home detention pending trial, putting hundreds of such defendants at risk of reincarceration, according to documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun. In 2021, the state sent $5 million to its Administrative Office of the Courts for a program that would pay private home detention companies to monitor defendants pending trial, so long as judges determined they qualified for release and couldn’t afford the service on their own, the documents show. The money came from the state’s allocation from the Congress’ Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

Nearly a year after formerly incarcerated transgender people testified to Maryland lawmakers about the troubling conditions they faced in state prisons and Baltimore jails, the agency in charge of their care continues to violate federal standards in how it houses trans prisoners, according to a coalition of trans rights advocates. The Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition, bolstered by policy experts and attorneys, contends that while the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has made some strides towards improving conditions, its policy of housing transgender prisoners “according to physical genitalia” violates the federal standard that those individuals should be housed on a case-by-case basis determined by health and safety and any security problems, among other factors.

The University of Maryland, College Park this month published its first research report on the institution’s connections to slavery, detailing how founder Charles B. Calvert was a descendant of enslavers and owned at least 55 slaves who worked on his Riverside plantation, land that makes up part of UMD’s campus. As part of an international consortium called Universities Studying Slavery, UMD launched The 1856 Project last year, named for the founding year of the university, then called the Maryland Agricultural College. Along with Calvert, who was a descendant of Lord Baltimore George Calvert, several of the college’s 600 initial financers were slaveholders or had ties to the slave economy.

The University of Maryland Center for Environment Science has named Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm as the new president of the statewide graduate school, leading six research labs across the state. Miralles-Wilhelm joins UMCES on July 1 from George Mason University, where he served as the dean of the College of Science, overseeing 350 full-time teaching and research faculty and 160 staff, according to a news release Tuesday.

Ocean City officials have issued a resounding public rejection of offshore wind company US Wind’s Community Benefits Package offer. The Community Benefits Package, which was extended to various Delaware Coastal Towns as well, included up to $2 million disbursements to communities over a 20-year period. According to Ocean City, in exchange for the commitment, US Wind expects local government officials to refrain from commenting negatively or objecting to US Wind’s offshore project.

Officials announced Superintendent David Bromwell will be stepping down from his role. Dorchester County Public Schools (DCPS) announced in a Facebook post that The Board of Education and Superintendent Bromwell have mutually decided that Bromwell will step down effective March 1. The Board of Education will reportedly vote on an Interim Superintendent to serve the remainder of Bromwell’s term through June 30. That vote will be held at a meeting tomorrow, Feb. 22.

The Frederick County Planning Commission on Wednesday will review a preliminary plan to build a combined agricultural and equestrian park near Thurmont that has piqued the interest of horse riding enthusiasts but drawn a rebuke from farmers in the area. In 2017, the 183-acre site was donated to the county by Richard W. Kanode, after whom the proposed park would be named. At that time, Kanode, who died in 2020, also contributed $1 million to the Community Foundation of Frederick County to establish an endowment fund for the proposed park.

The format of the SAT, a standardized test to determine high schoolers’ college readiness, is changing to a digital format this spring as colleges start to make standardized tests optional for admissions. The new format will allow students to get scores back in days instead of weeks, College Board, the nonprofit behind the test, said in January 2022 a news release. “The digital SAT will be easier to take, easier to give, and more relevant,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, vice president of college readiness assessments at College Board, in the release.