Around Maryland

With the Anne Arundel County Board of Education nearing its vote Nov. 15 on a final redistricting plan, parents and students shared their concerns at a hearing Monday evening at the Parham Building in Annapolis. The board is reviewing two redistricting plans that would both redraw boundaries at 48 of the 58 schools in the northern part of the county.

It’s something that Dr. Laura Malone has heard many times from parents who come to her clinic at the Kennedy Krieger Institute: Their child’s fever may have broken and they may no longer have the sniffles, but they aren’t the person they were before catching COVID-19. Once active, social athletes now get out of breath walking their dog around the block and don’t have the energy to hang out with friends.

All three major tenants at the long-abandoned hospital complex in Crownsville now have a new landlord: Anne Arundel County. The Anne Arundel County Food Bank, which operates a roughly 32,000-square-foot warehouse and provides meals to those who are food insecure, had its state lease assumed by the county, as did Hope House Treatment Center. On Monday night, the County Council unanimously approved a new lease for Gaudenzia Addiction Treatment and Recovery Services, securing the final deal for the three major tenants on the now county-owned land.

The Baltimore City Health Department has received its first supply of the updated COVID-19 vaccine for children, and will offer it for free to those whose families don’t have health insurance or whose health insurance doesn’t cover the cost of the shot. The health department’s announcement Thursday came about two weeks after it received its first supply of the new monovalent vaccine for adults. It received both shipments from the federal government’s Bridge Access Program, which provides shots at no-cost to the 25 to 30 million adults in America without health insurance.

Frederick County Public Schools on Tuesday announced it had joined other districts across the state and country in suing social media giants, arguing the companies are liable for students’ declining mental health. The lawsuit names Meta, Snap, ByteDance and Google — the parent companies of Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and Youtube, respectively.

Even before he knew what a reporter’s job really entailed, Tim Tooten was play-acting interviews with his middle school classmates in the back of the class, holding a pencil as a pretend microphone to ask them probing questions. Tooten never stopped asking questions, and nearly a half-century later, he is perhaps the most recognizable face and longest running reporter on the education beat in the region, having been at WBAL for 35 years.

One wintry morning, an investigator with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office teamed up with a federal agent to surveil America’s largest medical waste incinerator. They watched from nearby as employees at the south Baltimore facility used a front-end loader to lift inadequately burned waste into a container, then they tailed it on its way to a landfill in Virginia.

A key state fiscal panel approved a sharp increase in state borrowing for the next year as fiscal leaders look for ways to offset a projected structural deficit while improving schools and aging buildings and infrastructure. The recommended $500 million increase over anticipated levels comes as Gov. Wes Moore (D) and others express concerns about the state’s fiscal future. It also represents a potential reduction of cash once intended for capital projects.