Around Maryland

Metro is planning for a more open design for its next generation of rail cars that will better accommodate wheelchairs, strollers and bicycles, while giving passengers the ability to switch cars when trains get crowded. Transit officials recently traveled to New York to see subway cars that use the “open gangway” style, which provides enclosed walkways between cars to allow for the movement of passengers while in motion, much like an Amtrak train.

The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission awarded $14 million to several Baltimore universities, nonprofits and startups to boost stem cell development on Tuesday as part of an effort by the state government to expand funding for cancer research. The commission, which is an arm of the Maryland Technology Development Corp. (TEDCO), awarded 39 entities, including Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore as it looks to address a shortage of manufacturing facilities for biological research.

The NAACP is moving ahead with plans to depart Baltimore for Washington, D.C., and is seeking a partner to redevelop its Northwest Baltimore headquarters property. The civil rights advocacy group wants to redevelop its former headquarters at 4805 Mt. Hope Drive — a site that stretches just over three acres with a 43,454-square-foot red brick office building — into a community-based job and small business hub.

Since Tammy Young became a foster parent six years ago, she’s taken care of 35 children, including the five who reside at her St. Mary’s County home. To support her foster children — ages 4, 6, 8, 9 and 16 — it helps that Young receives a six-figure salary as a data architect with the U.S. Department of the Navy. A single mother of two adult children, she also has guardianship of a teenager who turned 18 in March.

Two top Montgomery County Public Schools officials and presidents of three MCPS employee unions published a letter to the County Council on Tuesday afternoon asking for an eight percent funding increase for next year’s school operating budget. The letter was prompted by a May 5 vote of the council’s Education & Culture Committee recommending a minimum seven percent increase in funding for next year’s MCPS budget and a maximum increase of nine percent.

Baltimore City’s school board has approved a $1.7 billion budget for the 2023-24 school year, with investments in academic supports for students and more than 600 new jobs across the district. The budget includes revenues tied to the state’s landmark Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform, representing a 6.3% increase over the 2022-23 academic year. System leadership previously said the budget aims to build stability and consistency, with investments in tutoring, summer extended learning, fine arts and athletics.

The U.S. has approved more than $42 billion in federal student loan debt forgiveness for more than 615,000 borrowers in the past 18 months as part of a program aimed at getting more people to work in public service jobs, the U.S. Department of Education said this week. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is open to teachers, librarians, nurses, public interest lawyers, military members and other public workers.

Getting someone with a substance-use disorder into a recovery program is a difficult process, even if that person wants help — in part because the list of those programs is a short one. The process is made even more difficult for parents with teenagers as this list is even shorter. In the City of Frederick, Maryland, an alternative high school helps students battling addiction.