Around Maryland

Frederick County Public Schools last week announced a new position: executive director of systemwide operations. Daniel Lippy, currently the district’s director of school management and charter schools, will take over the role on Jan. 1, FCPS wrote in a news release. Lippy has worked for FCPS since 1995, the release said, serving as a social studies teacher, assistant principal and principal.

On a given day, the roughly 15,000 people in Maryland prison facilities might encounter trouble in a variety of forms: shoddy medical care, fears of violence, confrontations with correctional officers or unhygienic food, to name a few examples. And yet, while prisoners frequently file formal grievances with their facilities, they say those complaints are not always taken seriously.Lawmakers and advocates are increasingly optimistic those prisoners will soon have somewhere else to turn: an ombudsman’s office, which would operate as an independent wing of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, outside the confines of the prison system.

Romel Williams has been contemplating a career change. The financial services salesman always has had a penchant for numbers and figured that accounting would be a good fit. But with $70,000 of student loans from his master’s in public finance, going back to school and taking on more debt seemed untenable. His outlook changed recently after he watched a news conference on Facebook heralding a scholarship for residents of Prince George’s County who are in a similar situation.

Howard County has launched the 2023 “HoCo Holiday” lights map for residents and visitors to locate the best and brightest commercial and residential holiday light displays in the county. Since the map was created in 2021, nearly 150 decorators from Cooksville and Hanover to Laurel and Woodstock have registered to share their seasonal spirit, according to a Tuesday news release. “Many of us have family holiday traditions of walking or driving around our neighborhoods to enjoy the festive holiday lights and experience the joy they bring,”

In Montgomery County, there are approximately 900 individuals who are suffering homelessness, according to a report by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG). The Stepping Stones Shelter in Rockville opened its doors in 1982 with the mission to provide emergency shelter, food and case management services to families experiencing homelessness. In 2023, the property has a capacity for 25 beds to house up to six families with their own bedroom.

The 12,000-square foot warehouse in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is buzzing on a Monday afternoon, with staff and volunteers at Manna Food Center packing food boxes as cars pull up to distribute donations at local schools. In the center of it all is Jackie DeCarlo, CEO of Manna, who says hunger isn’t just a holiday issue; it’s a year-round problem, and it’s been getting worse.

Baltimore County educators rallied Monday night to ask the school district to act fast in order to slow a wave of resignations. Cindy Sexton, president of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County, said Nov. 28 is the final scheduled meeting between union and Baltimore County Public Schools bargaining teams, and that the two sides are not yet actively engaged in over half the union’s demands for a new agreement for next school year. The current bargaining agreement expires at the end of June.

The Thanksgiving table can be a battlefield. For all the familial love and intimacy that can come with the holiday, it can put those who have chosen Baltimore as their homes on a collision course with “concerned” and “well-meaning” family members dead set on trashing our beautiful city. This year, we’re helping cut down on the time you have to spend preparing for combat. Call it data as conversational ammo.