Around Maryland

The Maryland State Department of Education released report cards Thursday grading the state’s public schools for the 2021-22 school year, and Baltimore County Public Schools fared poorly, counting more one- and two-star schools than before the coronavirus pandemic. This is the first time since the 2018-19 school year that the school report card data has been released. For the new scores, the U.S. Department of Education allowed states like Maryland to make one-time adjustments to their rating formulas. Factors such as standardized test scores, absenteeism and graduation rates, to name a few, were taken into account.

The appetite for farm-fresh, locally grown food is strong in Montgomery County, Maryland, where there’s an effort to provide guidance to a growing segment of farmers — those from various racial and ethnic backgrounds, including Black and Indigenous farmers. A new guide put out by the Montgomery Countryside Alliance and the county’s Office of Agriculture offers a range of resources for those eager to dig in to food production.

Maryland State School Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury — a self-described data geek — arrived from Texas 18 months ago with a plan in his back pocket to redesign an essential formula for how the state calculates levels of family poverty. Now the state education department has refined that Texas plan into a model for Maryland to target money more precisely for schools with the neediest children.

The Maryland Supreme Court will consider whether a person’s consent to a warrantless search of his or her computer’s digital data can be withdrawn after a consented-to copy has been made by law enforcement. The justices last week agreed to hear the state’s appeal of a lower court decision that law enforcement officers were constitutionally bound to honor a suspected child pornographer’s withdrawal of his consent to their pending warrantless search of his computer even though a week had passed and they had already copied the hard drive.

While a large recreational cannabis industry bill is taking up most of Maryland lawmakers’ time on the issue, a proposed pilot program would start allowing police to test drivers who officers believe are impaired by cannabis.

You don’t need to hop on a MARC train or fight the crowds in Washington, D.C. to see cherry blossoms this month. Fort McHenry, in South Baltimore, is the home of two groves of Yoshino Cherry trees, the very same kind that surrounds the Tidal Basin in D.C. Peak bloom — the time when 70% of the blossoms on the tree are open — for the cherry groves at Fort McHenry is estimated to be from March 24-28. It’s about the same timeframe as last year, when peak bloom was predicted to be from March 25-28.

A spike in sleep-related infant deaths in the Baltimore metro area is alarming medial providers and health officials and causing them to double down on safe sleep education efforts. Eleven babies have died in Baltimore since Dec. 1, according to preliminary data provided by Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Letitia Dzirasa on Wednesday. For comparison, 14 babies died in 2020 and 16 died in 2021, according to data from the city health department.