Around Maryland

A Maryland Office of the Inspector General for Education report released on Monday found that Baltimore City Public Schools paid as much as $631,000 over three years to a cab company for rides to school that students may never have taken. Investigators for the education inspector general’s office compared records from Yellow Cab — which is now known as zTrip, according to the report — with city school attendance records and found that between the 2018-19 school year and the 2021-22 school year, there were 1,115 students and 3,900 instances when the students had not been in school when the taxi company said they were transported there.

New legislation aimed at regulating the use of facial recognition and other forms of surveillance technology could test Baltimore lawmakers’ authority over their own police department, which is stuck in limbo in the wake of residents’ vote last year to bring the the department under city control. Twin bills introduced by Councilman Kristerfer Burnett would require both City Council approval and public input before the police department or other agencies can purchase surveillance technology.

The Maryland State Health Department has debuted a new online COVID-19 dashboard. The new dashboard is formatted differently from the original, but it shows some of the same data. Numbers reported include hospitalizations and case totals, along with new features like a color-coded map showing the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s community transmission levels for each county in the state.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and a Maryland-based nonprofit says although the COVID-19 pandemic is over, it left behind a trail of mental health issues for local families. According to statistics from Columbia-based organization Maryland Coalition of Families (MCF), emergency room visits increased 39% for youth age 12-17 from 2019 to 2021.

In early March, Verónica del Cid Gaitán noticed a rash on her arms and suspected she’d had an allergic reaction. She’d been avoiding medical care — she didn’t have health insurance and couldn’t afford a large bill — but management at the restaurant where she worked insisted she get the rash checked out before returning.

Ridership of the Towson Loop’s free-to-ride circulator buses is still well short of the quarter million annual passengers projected by a 2020 feasibility study. But growing usage of the bus system has heartened Baltimore County officials to explore expanding the service to other parts of the county. Towson Loop buses have logged more than 80,000 riders since the program launched a year and a half ago, said Baltimore County officials.

Summer is ahead, and for many, so are long road trips. Last summer, 97% of vacations were taken by car, according to AAA. These long road trips take a toll on vehicles — which end up in the mechanic’s shop sooner or later. In Montgomery County, officials are reminding drivers to look out for scams at car repair shops and to remember that their rights as consumers are protected under Maryland law.