Around Maryland

Joanie Gulden will do about anything to get Glen Burnie Park Elementary School students to engage with math. Anything. Gulden ate a pig’s foot. She got covered in slime. She tackled these and other fun (and gross) challenges to encourage students to practice and improve. For this dedication, and the results she and the school have seen, Guilden is among those being recognized as the best in the country by President Joe Biden through the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

As the word “normal” starts creeping back into everyone’s vocabulary, the Ride On bus in Montgomery County, Maryland, is starting to operate more normally as well. Beginning March 13, Ride On will increase its service by returning routes along with increasing the frequency of its current routes. The bump in service will bring Ride On to 86% of its pre-pandemic level of operations.

Seven candidates are running for three available seats on the Carroll County Board of Education. Of those candidates, two are incumbents seeking reelection, Tara Battaglia and Patricia Dorsey. In July, Battaglia announced her plan to run for reelection, saying her goals for her second term would be the same as her first: keeping communities together, drug prevention and consistency in education.

A contentious proposal to erect 11 digital billboards in downtown Baltimore was considered Thursday by the city’s Planning Commission, which approved six of the signs while tabling five for further review. The commission voted 6-2 with Victor Clark Jr., a citizen representative on the commission, abstaining. City Councilman Eric Costello, who sits on the Planning Commission, presented a motion allowing six of the signs to be installed while the remaining five — all that had proposed changes to billboard size or location — will be discussed further at a separate meeting.

Baltimore area watermen are now on a mission to remove abandoned crab pots that are harming crabs, other marine life and their livelihoods.  13 crews of watermen have been hired by the nonprofit group Oyster Recovery Partnership for a project to remove the crab pots.   “Removing the gear under this program supports Baltimore County with a positive and localized to this area by removing unmanaged gear that would otherwise compete with active fishing gear,” said Ward Slacum, the executive director for Oyster Recovery Partnership.

Anne Arundel County will receive an estimated $30 million over the next 18 years after participating in a national settlement agreement with manufacturers and distributors of opioids, the county announced Thursday. The city of Annapolis will also receive an estimated $1.2 million as part of the settlement, according to City Manager David Jarrell.

Howard County’s school board has unanimously adopted its operating and capital budget requests for the 2022-2023 school year, totaling $1.1 billion, a 14.5% increase over the school system’s fiscal 2022 operating budget. The request includes funding to implement the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a multibillion-dollar plan that affects schools statewide.