Around Maryland

The Frederick County Board of Education on Wednesday voted 5-2 to add more than $5 million to its draft spending plan, an attempt to further increase employee salaries. The decision came after about an hour of impassioned discussion and debate among board members. Some appeared torn between a belief that higher salaries would help ease the staffing demands on a fast-growing school system and a reluctance to inflate an already-tight budget.

Baltimore-area students are showing signs of returning to pre-pandemic levels of proficiency in English language arts but continued to have setbacks in mathematics, according to newly released scores from a spring 2022 standardized assessment of Maryland public school students. The Maryland State Department of Education in December released a statewide snapshot of public-school students’ overall scores on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program assessment. This standardized test, which the state administered for the first time in spring 2022, hinted at resilience amid the coronavirus pandemic in English language arts — but also produced ominous scores in math.

Before the first COVID-19 vaccines were readily available in Maryland, Rachel Ledney Odom was already sick and getting sicker. A fever, accompanied by a headache, cough, fatigue and heart palpitations put her in the hospital for a week. At home, she developed recurring pneumonia, brain fog, chest pain and myocarditis, or inflammation around the heart muscle. Today, Odom still feels sick and said friends, family and doctors don’t understand the enormity of her burden. She’s sidelined from her work, struggled with family responsibilities and needs assistance with once-mundane tasks, like showering. Fearing bringing COVID-19 back into their home, Odom’s teenage son stopped going to in-person school.

The top two officials of a state college funding agency pledged Tuesday to improve communication while resolving interest calculation issues that have plagued at least 500 account holders. Maryland 529 Executive Director Anthony Savia and interim board chair Geoffrey Newman also told members of two state Senate committees that the agency would look to other states with 529 plans as models as it works to help families unable to access their Maryland Prepaid College Trust balances or whose accounts failed to accrue promised interest. In addition, the agency has hired a liaison to work with lawmakers and contracted with Pressley Media Group to handle communications, Maryland 529 spokesperson Michelle Winner confirmed via email.

Baltimore County Public Schools educator Lloyd Allen pulled up to the school system’s board of education meeting Tuesday night with two empty egg cartons. The average price of eggs has skyrocketed, making Allen’s cartons a visual and financial reminder of the rising inflation. And yet, Allen pointed out, Superintendent Darryl L. Williams’ budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 does not include a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for staff. The omission left Allen “quite surprised.” Teachers Association of Baltimore County President Cindy Sexton echoed Allen’s public comment and pointed out other Maryland counties, such as Anne Arundel and Prince George, that have already thought to provide COLAs for staff.

Maryland’s inspector general for education says the Baltimore County school system failed to provide adequate security for its computer network servers, despite several warnings from the state in the years preceding a devastating ransomware attack in 2020. The investigative report published Monday places the school system partially at fault for the hack that disrupted school operations days before the Thanksgiving holiday in 2020, when all instruction and school board meetings were taking place online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The report offers new details about the cause of the attack, the total cost of recovery and actions taken by the Baltimore County school system prior to the incident.

Baltimore prosecutors and a city judge collaborated behind closed doors to “choreograph” the hearing where Adnan Syed’s conviction stemming from the killing of Hae Min Lee was overturned, attorneys representing her brother in an appeal seeking to restore his conviction have alleged. In a filing Monday evening — the last before oral arguments for the case in the Appellate Court of Maryland on Feb. 2 — Young Lee’s lawyers ramped up claims of impropriety in the proceedings that freed Syed, while doubling down on previous legal arguments and distinguishing their client’s position from that of Maryland’s attorney general’s office.

Howard University has been awarded a five-year, $90 million contract to lead a research center focused on technology for military systems, university and defense officials announced Monday, the first such center at a historically Black college or university. The new center, funded by the Defense Department and the Air Force, will focus on tactical autonomy technology for military systems. The investment reflects efforts by military leaders to promote and draw upon expertise that better reflects the country they are protecting — and correct biases and problems that weaken it.