Around Maryland

The Board of Education will make a decision tonight on the Homestead/Wakefield Elementary School Replacement Project, which will replace the overcapacity three-building school with a single building on the Wakefield campus. The project has been planned for phased construction over fiscal years 2022-2024 with funding provided by the county and state, according to agenda documents. In November 2021, the Interagency Commission on School Construction approved the project for state funding through the Built to Learn Act. The county has also committed to the local portion of capital funding, according to agenda documents.

Attention celebrity stargazers! A TV series based on local author Laura Lippman’s “Lady in the Lake” began filming Monday in Baltimore with its stars, two Academy Award winning actresses: Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o. Apple TV ordered a limited television series based on Lippman’s New York Times bestselling novel, which is set in 1960s Baltimore.

In a groundbreaking study, Dr. Lisa Cooper, a leading researcher on racial health disparities at Johns Hopkins University, found that nearly all 40 participating Baltimore-area primary care doctors said they regarded their White and their Black patients the same. But that’s not what her testing on their unconscious attitudes revealed.

The pandemic has exacerbated Maryland’s teacher shortage, a situation that already had been worsening for years. A Maryland State Education Association report released in February showed that a large majority of Maryland teachers surveyed said staff shortages, onerous workload and burnout are serious or very serious concerns, while 60% said the pandemic made them more likely to leave the profession or to retire earlier than planned. To address the problem, four Maryland universities are working to recruit and train Black male teachers, who nationwide make up only 2% of teachers. Meanwhile, in western Maryland, one school is preparing students to teach in rural areas.

The Maryland Department of Human Services launched a new program to help low-income households in the state offset the costs of water and wastewater bills. The Low Income Household Water Assistance Program offers up to $2,000 in assistance, focusing on households whose water bills are 30 days or more past due. “No family or child should go without access to water because of challenges paying bills,” said Department of Human Services Secretary, Lourdes Padilla.

While protests erupted across America following the death of George Floyd and “Defund the police” became a familiar rallying cry of the racial justice movement, Baltimore activist Ray Kelly noticed a key perspective missing from the national debate. He wanted to hear from the people whose lives were at stake: those living in communities most impacted by violent crime, police misconduct, growing poverty and persistent disinvestment — communities like Sandtown-Winchester, the West Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray died from injuries suffered in police custody five years before the wave of protests that gripped the nation in summer 2020.

About a quarter of Anne Arundel County residents believe crime is the county’s most concerning issue, according to a survey from Anne Arundel Community College. The poll found that 26% of respondents rated crime as the “most important problem facing the residents of Anne Arundel County” this year. Only 13% considered it the top problem last fall when the seriousness of COVID-19 was the most cited issue in the survey. Concern about drugs — the use or sale of illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine, or use of prescription painkillers for nonmedical purposes — fared similarly with 20% of respondents saying it is the most important issue compared to 9% last fall.

Maryland is set to invest millions in its state parks later this year thanks to a new bill signed into law. The Great Maryland Outdoors Act, passed in March, dedicates funding for the expansion of parks, maintenance and the hiring of permanent employees once the law kicks in on July 1. Delegate Michele Guyton has supported bill from its inception and emphasized the need for children to be outdoors. “The problems that kids are having from sitting in front of the screen — they’re not just because they’re sitting in front of a screen,” Guyton said