Around Maryland

Morgan State University announced Tuesday that it received a three-year $399,747 research grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Studies (IES). The grant will be used to prepare minority-serving institution faculty members to conduct high-quality education research that advances knowledge pertaining to the impact of trauma-informed teaching practices in online learning environments. The three-year grant is only the second of its kind to be awarded to a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) by the Department of Education.

Montgomery County Public Schools announced a slate of initiatives Tuesday to tackle a rise in chronic student absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic. Most of the plan focuses on conducting additional analysis, like reviewing student absenteeism data by factors such as day of the week, course and teacher, to understand more of the root causes. The district is putting new platforms in place to allow school teams to review student data in real-time, and will develop school-specific plans — including engaging with parents — to try to remove obstacles that would prevent a student from getting to the classroom.

School bus drivers in Charles County, Maryland, are letting families know there might not be enough of them on the road in time for the first day of school amid an impasse over better pay and job security. “More than 23,000 Charles County school students and parents may not have bus transportation on August 28, the first day of school, because of the refusal of the school system to treat bus drivers and attendants in an equitable manner,” a news release from the Charles County School Bus Contractors Association said.

The Maryland Education and Training Voucher program is a federally-funded, state-administered program designed to help youth who have been in foster care. The program provides up to $5,000 a year for qualified school-related expenses. The nonprofit Foster Success Education Services which recently started managing the program, also planned to provide additional services.

As his bosses consider whether to give him a new contract, Mohammed Choudhury, Maryland’s superintendent of schools, has been meeting one-on-one with General Assembly leaders involved in education policy in an attempt to repair strained relationships. The meetings — which one lawmaker called a “kiss and make up tour” and another described as an “apology tour” — come on the heels of a nine-page letter the superintendent sent to the leaders on June 30 acknowledging “missteps in proactively communicating changes” and July reporting by The Washington Post about claims he has mismanaged his agency.

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.