Around Maryland

Every year in September, Tracey Malone hosts an event filled with free food, giveaways, games and music in Sandtown-Winchester in honor of her brother who was shot and killed in the West Baltimore neighborhood in 2013. Last summer, a young kid came up to her at the event and said it was the most fun he had all year. He even brought nearly two dozen other kids to enjoy the event.

The University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center received the gold level “Safe Sleep” recertification from Cribs for Kids. This is the second time the hospital has met the standard for receiving gold level certification. Ensuring hospital care teams and families have the resources to promote safe sleep practices is important as it helps reduce the risk of sudden infant death, accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed and unsafe sleep injuries for infants.

A long-stalled plan to move the Baltimore City Circuit Court out of decrepit buildings on Calvert Street to a new spot may be getting another chance after state officials attended a tour of the hulking, vacant Metro West complex. The tour included Gov. Wes Moore and Audrey J.S. Carrion, chief and administrative judge for Baltimore City Circuit Court, and signaled that the hunt for new court digs has ramped up again.

Baltimore’s acting police commissioner made a surprising admission on Monday, calling his department’s lack of presence at a large weekend gathering in South Baltimore in which 30 people were shot — two of them fatally — an intelligence failure. Though Brooklyn Day happens every year, Richard Worley said, it takes place on different weekends. If police would have known three or four days ahead of time, he said, they could have put together an operations plan.

Lori Morrow says for the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform plan to work effectively, schools must ensure students receive the mental health services they need. Morrow, the mother of two children and education advocate from Prince George’s County, said school-based health centers should be created and staffed with mental health professionals accessible for students and their families, especially in rural and underserved communities.

The Frederick County Board of Education will, later this summer, discuss putting cameras in some special education classrooms. The board is set to examine the issue at its Aug. 30 meeting. Member David Bass said he lobbied for it to be put on an agenda, and received support from members Nancy Allen and Dean Rose. Three board members must sign on before any topic can be added to an agenda.

Baltimore County Public Schools’ new superintendent, Myriam Yarbrough, started her first day of work sharing details of a plan to improve academic achievement and teacher recruitment and retention. “It’s important to me that our community sees that we’re taking urgent action to reverse the trend of declining academic performance and improving climate and operational efficiency,” Yarbrough said.

At 9 months old, most babies are just learning how to stand and crawl on their own. Krishanti “Krish” O’Mara Vignarajah was learning how to navigate life in a new country. Her parents, Elyathamby and Anandasothy Vignarajah, left Sri Lanka at the brink of a civil war in the early 1980s, with their infant daughter and 3-year-old son.