Around Maryland

As the Howard County Council weighs two bills that would establish the county’s first-ever Office of the Inspector General, residents have taken more than a passing interest in the idea. Dozens of people appeared at a council meeting Monday evening to share their thoughts and concerns about the legislation — and even a few grammatical suggestions.

For the first time since the pandemic, the number of children in Maryland enrolled in pre-Kindergarten programs climbed above 30,000 last year. Since then, that number has grown even more and additional enrollment is expected. The state is in the early stages of implementing the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a decade-long education reform law, which requires an expansion of full-day pre-K for 3-and 4-year-old children.

In 1938, about 600 workers — predominantly Black women — walked off the job in what was then the self-proclaimed “Crab Capital of the World” to protest a wage cut at the Crisfield crab-picking houses. For five weeks, the crab pickers fought to reinstate their pay. As they did, angry white mobs burned cars, invaded homes, and threatened their union representatives. Labor organizers brought in groceries; white residents blocked them from delivering them to the strikers, hoping starvation would bring them back to work.

With dangerous temperatures continuing to climb, the Code Red Extreme Heat Alert in Baltimore City has been extended through Wednesday, July 17. The temperatures could reach 102 degrees on Tuesday and 97 on Wednesday. The heat index, a measure of air temperature and relative humidity that indicates how hot it feels to the human body, could get as high as 110 degrees over the next few days.

Molly Adams said she’s “lucky” to teach third grade at Salem Avenue Elementary School. Salem Avenue is of Washington County’s nine Title I elementary schools and one of the most impoverished in Washington County. But Adams used to teach in Baltimore City, where she said she had very little behavioral support in the classroom by comparison. “It is not that I had terrible daily bloodshed in my classroom in Baltimore or anything like that,” she said.

The new superintendent of schools for Montgomery County, Maryland, is entering his third week on the job with the new school year beginning in just over a month. Thomas Taylor, who came from Stafford County, Virginia, now leads Maryland’s largest school district, with a budget of $3.3 billion, more than 160,000 students and over 200 school buildings. WTOP talked to Taylor about the job he’s taken on.

As the inaugural year of Gov. Wes Moore’s signature service year program comes to an end, participants and host organizations preparing for a commencement celebration at Camden Yards on Tuesday afternoon said the experience has been positive. “Working at Talisman has just been a life-changing experience for me,” Brad Krantz, a Maryland Corps member, said. “It’s given me the ability to serve others selflessly, which has really put me in touch with my true authentic self.”

The FBI is warning bank customers about a string of alarming, violent crimes across Maryland, including many in Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties. Organized groups are targeting people after they leave ATMs or banks and robbing them at gunpoint. It’s called “jugging.” The term comes from criminals targeting people with “jugs” or large amounts of cash after they leave ATMs.