Around Maryland

The line for a hot meal stretched down the air-conditioned hallway at Beans & Bread in Fells Point. Inside the cafeteria, mothers and grandmothers had walked through 100-degree July heat to find lunch for their kids. The Friday menu was fried fish, Italian sausage pasta, baked chicken, green beans, rice, and macaroni and cheese.

About 4,500 users were impacted by a cyberattack on Prince George’s County Public Schools that was detected early Monday, according to the school district. The attack affected about 2.5 percent of the school system’s 180,000 users and it primarily impacted staff accounts, the district said in a news release. The school system’s main business and student information systems, Oracle and SchoolMAX, did not appear to be impacted, school officials said. But the system said it is still understanding the full scope of the incident.

Montgomery County suffered 49 carjackings from January through March in a record high for the first quarter of the year, according to Data Montgomery. The highest first-quarter number was previously eighteen in 2021. The frequency of incidents since then has fallen, but the county is on track to count a record number of carjackings for the sixth year running. Montgomery County saw eight carjackings in 2017, which grew to 80 last year; the figure for 2023 already stands at 74, according to Data Montgomery.

Forget about the salt-box cornhole games. No chicken wing-eating contest, either. And sorry, you won’t hear all the indie bands. The annual offbeat Hampdenfest street festival, scheduled for next month, has been canceled. Organizers broke the news online Tuesday, saying city officials denied their event permit. Organizer Benn Ray blamed the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts for the mess in planning a return of Artscape and leaving smaller festivals, such as Hampdenfest, in the lurch.

The Maryland Public Service Commission held a hearing Tuesday to consider the relocation of Baltimore's Gas and Electric external gas regulators. BGE wants to install the regulators on the homes of some customers who don't want them. The regulators have sparked lawsuits and protests in Baltimore City over the last few months. In June, three Federal Hill residents were arrested for blocking crews from installing the regulators on their homes. That group was part of a lawsuit that temporarily halted the installation of the regulators in Baltimore.

The first day of school is steadily approaching for Baltimore City Public School System students once again. But before that return to school on Aug. 28, there’s paperwork and to-do lists for families and guardians to complete, most of which can be found at BCPSS’ back-to-school webpage. Here’s what Baltimore City students and their caregivers need to know ahead of the 2023-24 school year.

A federal appeals court threw out a Maryland case challenging guidelines that allow schools to create support plans for transgender or gender-nonconforming students and do not require the knowledge or consent of the students’ parents. The decision Monday by the majority in a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit did not address the merits of guidelines written by Montgomery County Public Schools. Instead, it said the parents in the case lacked standing. The judges sent the case back to district court to be dismissed.

Montgomery County Public Schools has retained Baltimore law firm Jackson Lewis to look into “significant allegations of harassment and bullying involving one of our principals,” it said in a statement Monday, referring to allegations involving Joel Beidleman, the former Farquhar Middle School principal accused in a Washington Post report Friday of a years-long pattern of sexual harassment.

D.C. has a lot to offer. Great dining, history, museums and attractions. But when it comes to ground level ozone, the city scores and F with the American Lung Association. The association ranked several parts of the DMV with several regions receiving poor scores. The American Lung Association's 2023 State of the Air report based the failing score on factors such as the number of days with code orange ozone levels.