Around Maryland

When Prince George’s County Schools CEO Monica Goldson announced back in January that she was tired of a dysfunctional school board and retiring, it touched off a search process laid out by state law. It includes public input, says Erica Berry Wilson the county executive’s point person on the CEO search. “We’re listening to the public, we’re listening to the community. And we’re hearing what they want,” said Wilson, chief of staff to the County Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Education.

Growing up in West Baltimore, Lamar Richards remembers childhood summers playing football on the streets of Sandtown-Winchester and using the $5 his parents gave him — while scrounging for some extra change — to buy a chicken box. Life was simple then, he said. He knew he wanted to leave the city as an adult when it felt like crime was everywhere; when people he knew went to jail or got shot and killed; when gunshots became background noise.

Frederick will receive $80,000 from a regional planning organization to help improve interactions between businesses and pedestrians in the city’s East Street corridor as the area redevelops. The money from the Transportation Planning Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments will fund 30% of the design of plans for new sidewalks, bike lanes, and pedestrian crossing improvements where the city is trying to improve walkability and pedestrian access.

The American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) Monday announced it will host its Educating Leaders 2023 Conference Wednesday through Friday at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel. Gov. Wes Moore will open the conference Wednesday morning. Osteopathic medicine is the fastest growing sector of medical education with two new proposed medical schools in Maryland, including the proposed Maryland College of Osteopathic Medicine at Morgan State University.

The Westminster-based nonprofit Together We Own It has terminated all youth programs and begun laying off staff as of April 6, after Carroll County Public Schools, the county commissioners and the county’s Department of Citizen Services canceled contracts with the group late last month. The organization’s founder and former executive director, Katie Speert, 26, was the subject of a police investigation in February involving alleged sexual solicitation of a 17-year-old minor, according to Carroll County State’s Attorney Haven Shoemaker, but no charges were filed.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a jurisdictional question from oil companies fighting a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by the city of Baltimore over climate change. The Supreme Court’s denial is a victory for Baltimore and for other state and local governments that have repeatedly asked to keep their climate change lawsuits in state courts, where both sides agree the governments stand a better chance of winning large damages than in federal court.

As federal deadlines to spend Baltimore’s windfall of pandemic aid creep closer, a pivotal question hangs in the balance: Will the city, with its notoriously slow gears and occasional troubles with federal funds, be able to land its broad and flashy slate of new projects? The city’s plans to deploy $641 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to tackle an array of entrenched problems — from vacant homes to violent crime to helping low-income residents access internet — have chugged along gradually.

After a 17-year stint in prison for attempted murder, Brandon Wilson joined the Mayor’s Office of African American Male Engagement in 2019 to help young Baltimore men find resources that could help them avoid the mistakes he made. Later that year, he joined the nonprofit group We Our Us, where he now is one of five men who answer phone calls for the nonprofit’s Stop the Beef Hotline.

Baltimore County’s director of corrections defended conditions at the Baltimore County Detention Center on Friday, refuting allegations by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender of poor treatment of youth inmates at the adult facility. However, the corrections director, Walt Pesterfield, also acknowledged in a publicly released letter that the county “shares concerns regarding appropriate placement for juvenile offenders at a facility that was not designed to house juveniles.”