Around Maryland

Buildings have been demolished, the design for a new train station has been released — Amtrak’s future Frederick Douglass Tunnel project is already making West Baltimore look different. But residents are urging city leaders to do what they can to pump the brakes on it until a civil rights investigation plays out. The federally subsidized passenger rail company has won billions in federal grant dollars to replace the current Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, which is more than 150 years old.

Baltimore is expanding a program to monitor students commuting home to areas near 10 schools, officials said at a City Council committee meeting Wednesday. Last summer, Mayor Brandon Scott launched the Safe Passage Baltimore initiative as a pilot, describing it as a program meant to make students traveling home from school safer.

The new Frederick Police Department headquarters near Carroll Creek is on track to open at the end of the first quarter of 2025 and will be completed under budget, the city said. Speaking on behalf of the police department at Thursday's Board of Aldermen public meeting, Marc DeOcampo, director of strategic planning and executive projects for the city, said that a series of discounts available to the city will allow the project to come in under budget.

Sorry to burst your bubble, everyone. Despite what some circulating messages might say, there is no free admission to the Maryland Zoo next week, zoo officials said Wednesday. The message, which zoo officials said is from an unaffiliated Facebook page, claims the zoo is free for all visitors from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Sept. 18 — but, to be clear, it is not.

We’re getting uplifted from the good coming from unexpected places. There are a billion active users on social media platform TikTok. They usually check it out to laugh, for the latest popular trends and challenges or maybe for advice and a positive word of encouragement. But it might surprise and inspire people to hear that TikTok has donated thousands of dollars to our local schools.

With the academic year in full swing, many public school districts in the Baltimore area are still working to address teacher vacancies, but the gaps are not nearly as large as in the past few years. Ranging from 171 vacancies in Baltimore City schools to zero in Harford County, the progress is measurable. School officials and teacher union leaders say state-mandated salary increases, apprenticeship programs and recruitment initiatives have helped several counties reduce vacancies.

Health officials in Maryland said Wednesday they will open the state’s first high-intensity inpatient addiction treatment center in years for children and young people in Baltimore, reflecting grim data showing the state’s youngest residents are not immune from the opioid epidemic. In 2014, there were four teens from ages 13 to 17 who died in the state from overdoses, a number that rose to 19 in 2023.

Ronald Silver II died of hyperthermia, according to an external autopsy report by Maryland’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The Baltimore City Department of Public Works employee was on the clock as a sanitation worker when he collapsed on a porch on a day in early August that had a heat index of 103. The heat index is what the temperature feels like when relative humidity is taken into account.

Rev. Dr. Alvin Hathaway Sr. remembers when Upton — the historically Black West Baltimore neighborhood and cultural epicenter known for treasured landmarks like the Royal Theater — was home to the Mitchells, a family of civil rights firebrands famously dubbed “The Black Kennedys.” Hathaway, born in 1951, was a youngster in the Mitchell family’s heyday and grew up with them as neighbors. Little George was his companion on the playground. (Photo: Baltimore Beat)