Around Maryland

Anne Arundel County has received a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to implement a new comprehensive hate crime prevention program. County Executive Steuart Pittman began work on the Hate Bias Forum in 2020, after learning that Anne Arundel led the state in reported hate crimes. Anne Arundel was awarded an amount that was three times the initial grant request due to the strength of its application, making it the only county entity in Maryland to receive the grant in this cycle, according to a county news release.

Paul Lemle’s mandate to members of the 75,000-member Maryland State Education Association is short and straightforward: It’s time to invest in ourselves. “I want to talk to [teachers] about power, and why it’s important that our own voices matter in education policies and how schools get funded,” said Lemle who, on Aug. 1, became president of the MSEA. “I want to build that power by recruiting our members into action.

Gaithersburg-based Emergent BioSolutions was granted federal approval to use its smallpox vaccine in people at high risk for mpox infections that have been surging in Africa. Emergent had been making the vaccine called ACAM2000 for the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile in case of a bioterrorism attack. It’s been federally approved for smallpox since 2007 but wasn’t used much previously against mpox, another orthopoxvirus, because it can’t be used with people with compromised immune systems. That includes people with HIV.

School systems around the Baltimore area are looking to hire teachers, administrators and support staff as the academic year kicks off. As of the first day of school Aug. 26, Baltimore City Public Schools had 171 open teacher positions for the 2024-25 year, according to data provided by the school district. There are 15 administration positions posted on its website, including for educational specialists.

Frederick County outreach workers counted a total of 250 people experiencing homelessness on Jan. 24, 2024 — up from 226 during the same week last year, according to data recently released by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. The data was collected as part of the Point-in-Time (PIT) count, an initiative of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development that is carried out locally each year.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office is hosting a community shred and prescription drug turn-in event on Saturday, Sept. 21, outside the Robinwood Professional Center near Hagerstown, the sheriff’s office announced Tuesday. The event will be from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m., or until the shred truck is full, in the silver parking lot at the 11110 Medical Campus Road medical complex, according to a release the sheriff’s office put out on Facebook and via its app.

The Somerset County Health Department getting significant funding to broaden their services. The agency has been awarded $1.7 million via a Health Equity Resource Communities (HERC) grant from the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission. Over the course of 5 years, those funds will be used to expand the reach of Community Health Workers (CHW) in the county. Those health officials work with other agencies to connect patients with the resources and information that they need to stay healthy.

The long-vacant Hearn Building in the heart of Cambridge remains a focal point as developers meet with city officials Tuesday night to discuss revised site plans for the property. Located on Race Street, the Hearn Building, the building next door, have stood empty for years, with developers Green Street Housing proposing to transform the site into a mixed-use development. The project envisions workforce housing on the upper floors and commercial space on the ground level.

Cellphone use in schools has become one of the most controversial topics in the D.C. area as the new academic year kicks off. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s July executive order establishing the need for cellphone-free education across the state — and the Virginia Department of Education’s draft guidelines calling for “bell-to-bell” cellphone-free schools — are moves that have thrust the impact of cellphone use on education into the forefront.