Around Maryland

Baltimore’s spending board is poised to approve $645,000 to settle two more legal disputes related to the city police department’s disgraced Gun Trace Task Force involving plaintiffs who spent time in prison before their charges were vacated. Next week the Board of Estimates will consider two settlements, one for $330,000 with Jamar Bowles and another for $315,000 with Alex Holden, both of which have been recommended for approval by the city’s settlement review committee.

Government agencies and school districts in the D.C. area announced plans for two-hour delayed openings Thursday in advance of a winter storm expected to hit the area in the early-morning hours. Winter weather advisories have been issued by the National Weather Service for much of the Washington and Baltimore region, which will see precipitation — probably in the form of sleet, freezing rain and plain rain — during the predawn hours, according to the Capital Weather Gang.

One time, Jaz Erenberg’s kindergarten teacher called her mother in to school. As the teacher showed her a coloring page, one with the line-art of a cat that disappeared in a burst of rainbow colors, they sounded slightly concerned — Erenberg, the teacher told her mother, was having trouble coloring within the lines. “No,” her mother, who was a linguist, said, “She’s an artist.” Erenberg, now 32, smiles as she recalled this story. She doesn’t remember this happening, Erenberg said, but it sounded about right.

The Baltimore County school board, racked by years of infighting and a struggle to achieve a working majority, seems poised to turn the page. The board’s election last week of Jane Lichter, an educator who spent 37 years with the school system, as chair, and career social worker Robin Harvey as vice chair, was the first sign. Both seemed eager to set a collegial tone at their first meeting, which came months after the board went to court to try to fire its longtime auditor — a case that revealed longstanding acrimony among members.

The $32 million overhaul of Baltimore’s Montebello Elementary-Middle School includes 307 new windows, a revamped gym and auditorium and high-tech wiring with large touch screens to replace traditional chalkboards. The project to redevelop the 100-year-old academic landmark on a hill overlooking Lake Montebello has been in the works for 18 months as part of the $1.1 billion 21st Century School Buildings program that so far has replaced, revamped and renovated 26 city schools over the past six years.

 In Baltimore, the Maryland community with the highest numbers of needy students and the most demand for experienced teachers, the salaries of teachers with a master’s degree decreased from 2010 to 2020 to the lowest in the state, according to data from the Maryland State Department of Education. The average salaries for Baltimore teachers with a master’s degree declined from $72,758 in 2010, when it was among the middle of pay for such teachers in the state, to $64,405 in 2020, the data shows. The salary was more than $8,000 lower than what teachers with master’s degrees were paid in Garrett County, the next lowest pay for a Maryland school district.

Maryland’s public defenders on Tuesday voted to join the largest union for state government employees, more than two years after launching a unionization push. The state’s Office of the Public Defender employs some 600 lawyers, paralegals, social workers and administrative assistants, with outposts in every Maryland county and Baltimore, to represent marginalized people accused of crimes. Tuesday’s landslide vote means the office’s attorneys and support staff will be represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and immediately reap the protections of AFSCME’s contract with the Maryland.

Johns Hopkins University graduate students have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to create a union, an important step toward a union election. As part of the push to unionize an estimated 3,335 Hopkins graduate students under the Teachers and Researchers United (TRU) banner, the group looks to join United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Organizers filed the petition on Dec. 2 and plan to host a union election next semester. The organizers hope to provide a minimum yearly stipend of at least $40,000 a year to workers, ensure on-time payments, make reforms to the grievance process and provide visa assistance for international students and other changes to create better working conditions for graduate students. The group would represent students who currently provide instructional and research services to the Baltimore institution.