Around Maryland

Last month in Howard County, Maryland, many public school students started their new school year waiting on the curb as school buses were hours late to pick them up or didn’t show up at all. Now, the Maryland School Bus Contractors Association, which represents 3,000 school buses in 19 of the state’s 24 jurisdictions, is weighing in and calling on the county school system to terminate its contract with California-based company Zum Transportation that operates 210+ buses for the school system.

A light rain misted the Frederick Fairgrounds Sunday morning as people broke down their vendor tents, loaded their campers and cleaned out the stables on the last day of the 161st Great Frederick Fair. Despite some rain, total attendance for this year’s fair was on par with previous years at around 200,000 people, general manager Karen Nicklas wrote in an email Sunday. Friday had the largest number of attendees with 35,000 people, she wrote.

Baltimore City Public Schools leaders remain on a mission to vaccinate thousands of students. This is the first year that administrators opened district headquarters to offer shots. Some might say the North Avenue administration building is the most unlikely place to have students vaccinated, but the district said it's all about making the clinics convenient for families.

Prince George’s County Public Schools will use about $2.3 million from a legal settlement with Juul Labs — the e-cigarette manufacturer — to fight youth vaping and nicotine addiction, according to a memo from the school system. With little discussion, the school board unanimously approved the use of the settlement’s revenue during a meeting Thursday evening.

Walk through the Old Goucher neighborhood in North Baltimore, and husbands Kelly Cross and Mateusz Rozanski will tell you how several of the tree-lined streets weren’t always filled with such greenery. The couple planted hundreds of trees and took out over 100 tons of concrete in the neighborhood over the past decade.

Fresh after the rains from Tropical Storm Ophelia, a steady stream of Artscape attendees trekked up and down Charles Street, but it didn’t seem like a flood of people like years prior, say those there Sunday. The storm also caused organizers to cancel Saturday’s events and put a damper on vendor profits. Some art enthusiasts were happy to be there all the same, but questioned whether a new fall date for the festival as a good idea.

Carroll County students’ proficiency in math and English generally increased last year, according to results from the Maryland State Comprehensive Assessment shared with the Board of Education last week. Carroll County Public School students outscored Maryland in all categories, and beat county test results from the 2021-2022 school year in most cases, according to data presented to the school board.

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation Board could have most of its staff filled this year, according to an update Thursday from the board’s executive director. Rachel Hise said, during an online session, that staff received at least 175 applications for five education policy analyst positions. “We have a very strong possibility of having all of them on board hopefully well before the end of the calendar year,” she said.

Beverly Taylor can’t figure out why her commute has become more congested. When summer ended and schools resumed this fall, her typical 50-minute drive from Bowie to downtown Washington began taking 75 minutes, worse than before the coronavirus pandemic started. “I don’t understand, because downtown is so vacant,” said Taylor, 60, a human resources director at a law firm.