Around Maryland

Frederick County Public Schools plans to more forcefully publicize its contract with a 24/7 virtual tutoring platform, hoping students use it more. At its most recent meeting, the Frederick County Board of Education approved the final renewal of the district’s three-year contract with TutorMe, a Los-Angeles based company that provides on-demand tutoring in hundreds of subjects.

A single mother of six, Ms. B worked hard to change the circumstances that cost her the custody of her children. Her kids desperately wanted to return to their mom, her attorney Natasha Khalfani testified in the Maryland General Assembly in 2022, not revealing her client’s name. Three of the children were being cared for by their father, while the oldest three were placed in foster care. The case stalled for years in court, long after Ms. B was deemed fit to regain custody.

Until the middle of January, Ryan took the bus to school. The junior at Lansdowne High School walked into the blue, silver and brick building, where he saw his friends, took Advanced Placement classes and sometimes stayed late to participate in the Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. But after the 16-year-old made threats and was suspended, he spent the majority of his spring semester at home, staring at his laptop, which he used to log in to Baltimore County Public Schools’ Virtual Learning Program.

The head of the leading trade association for builders in Maryland said Carroll County rushed its decision to increase to its new housing impact fee, denying builders the opportunity to offer public opposition. On July 27, the Board of Carroll County Commissioners voted to increase the fee from zero to $3,000 per single-family home beginning Sept. 1. The charge on developers is meant to provide funding for school construction.

With employee health care costs leading the way, Maryland’s public school districts spent $21.1 billion between fiscal years 2019 and 2022 not on teacher and staff salaries, but on everything else that keeps the schools running. That’s the bottom line if you add up all 26,000-plus vendor payments of $25,000 or more made by Maryland’s school districts between the 2018-2019 and 2021-2022 school years.

A new report showed that Baltimore continues to have one of the worst drug problems in the United States. The San Francisco Chronicle created an online tool that allows people to track drug overdose deaths for any given city or county in America. It concluded that the highest number of overdose deaths were in Baltimore.

Bryson Hudson, 16, once carried a gun out of fear and was shot for the first time in December on his way home from squeegeeing car windshields in the Inner Harbor. Last week, he was shot again, fatally this time. His funeral will be soon and there are some other things his family would like the city to know about him. As a kid, Bryson played football. He could play the piano. He was a rapper, stage name of LorB, with a music video. He liked to dance and joke and smiled often.

The faculty at Frederick Community College has voted to form a union and will file official paperwork at a rally on Monday, the Maryland affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers announced Friday. In a news release from AFT-Maryland, Greg Coldren, a math professor at the college, said that “the solidarity and power we are creating with our union will ensure our protection.”

Poolesville High School parents are approaching the new school year with trepidation after construction on a lengthy campus renovation project caused health concerns last semester. Montgomery County Public School officials say the most invasive part of the project—roof tarring—will be completed before students return on Aug. 28 and have committed to a “frequent communication and feedback loop” to address any ongoing concerns about the $60.2 million project.