Around Maryland

Shortly after 10 a.m. Saturday, a crowd began making its way from Frederick High School and through the streets toward downtown. They made their way a few blocks to the city’s Baker Park, where tables and booths were set up for the 2023 Maryland STEM Festival. The event was meant to increase interest in STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math.

Frederick County Public Schools held a recruitment event Thursday evening to entice students, career changers and district support employees to jump into teaching. The event, called “Become an Educator Night,” was hosted at Frederick High School. It featured tables with FCPS human resources and professional development employees, plus representatives from local colleges and universities that offer education degrees.

A judge cannot serve on the Maryland State Bar Association Committee on Ethics monthly volunteer hotline, the Maryland Judicial Ethics Committee has ruled. In a published ethics opinion issued late last month, the Maryland Judicial Ethics Committee found that the MSBA ethics committee’s judicial members cannot sit on the monthly hotline and field calls from Maryland attorneys on ethical issues because an attorney would likely rely more heavily on a judge’s interpretation.

Maryland’s two largest school systems both have about 3 percent fewer students this fall than they did before the coronavirus pandemic, according to enrollment data made public this week. Montgomery County Public Schools counted 160,770 students on Sept. 30. That was almost unchanged from last year’s total and about 4,500 fewer than the enrollment in fall 2019.

With the funeral of fallen Baltimore City Fire Lt. Dillon J. Rinaldo set for Friday, motorists in Baltimore City and County can expect traffic delays and road closures. The Baltimore City Fire Department said Wednesday that Rinaldo’s funeral will begin at 10 a.m. Friday at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen at 5200 N. Charles St., followed by interment at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium.

A new digital flight path is expected to improve emergency response times in north Ocean City. The Ocean City Council on Tuesday approved spending about $43,000 to establish a helicopter instrument approach procedure (IAP) and departure procedure (DP) for Northside Park. Once the procedures are in place, helicopters will be able to land in Northside Park even during weather conditions that require an instrument-only approach.

Open enrollment on Maryland’s health insurance marketplace kicked off Wednesday with a new carrier, expanded savings for young adults and changes to value plans. Marylanders have until Jan. 15 to purchase private plans on the marketplace, the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange said in a news release. Those who qualify for Medicaid may enroll at any time of year.

More than two years after the discovery of severe pollution coming from its two wastewater treatment plants, Baltimore has agreed to pay a state fine of up to $4.75 million and meet a series of deadlines to make repairs, officials will say Thursday. Nearly half of the civil penalty, which is among the largest for water pollution in state history, will fund environmental projects, with a focus on the Patapsco and Back rivers, which received millions of gallons of polluted water from the plants.