Around Maryland

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.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Thursday announced a $1 million gift from philanthropists Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker as a dedicated endowment for the OrchKids Program and support its community-based performances. The OrchKids Program started with 30 students at one school and has grown to serve more than 1,850 students across seven embedded sites in Baltimore plus a summer home at Goucher College.

Justin Thurmond and his family in Alma, Ark., will keep their thermostat set at a balmy 78 degrees this summer to save money. They’re ending their weekly meals out, juggling streaming services and cutting back on groceries and other spending. It’s still not enough to offset the $460 he’ll need each month to pay down $42,000 in student loans come Oct. 1. That’s when Thurmond and 43.6 million other borrowers will have to resume monthly payments on a collective $1.6 trillion in college debt, according to the Department of Education, ending a three-year pause.

As birds chirped and the sun set at Gathland State Park near Burkittsville on Wednesday evening, about 200 candles flickered in front of the park’s War Correspondents Memorial Arch. The illumination at the park, held in front of the oldest-known monument in the world dedicated to journalists killed in combat, was part of an annual statewide observation of the importance of press freedom.

An ordinance introduced this week would allow the Town of Berlin to install speed cameras near schools. A first reading of an ordinance that would establish the use of speed cameras in designated school zones was held during Monday’s meeting of the Berlin Town Council. Citizens will have a chance to weigh in on the proposed ordnance next month. “A public hearing will be held on Monday, July 10, 2023, at 7 p.m.,” Mayor Zack Tyndall said.

Sunday marks the 115th year since Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was born in West Baltimore. Beloved Community Services Corporation, a Baltimore nonprofit, is hosting a celebration of Marshall’s birthday on Sunday at the Baltimore Art Museum. The legendary civil rights lawyer and first Black Supreme Court justice died in 1993 at age 84.

Maryland’s Supreme Court sidestepped the question of whether dismissal is required when a prosecutor intentionally fails to disclose extensive exculpatory evidence to the defense in a criminal case. In an opinion issued last week, the high court declined to wade into the evidentiary issues at the heart of Jonathan D. Smith’s 2001 murder conviction in Talbot County, though both the state and the defense agreed on appeal that the case should be dismissed.