Commentary

Almost everyone remembers being in the school nurse’s office when growing up. School nurses were there to tend to the scrapes, stomach aches, and minor illnesses that are just part of childhood. But policymakers know that school nurses do much more than that. School nurses are the backbone of the health care services that ensure students can stay in school and learn. When the Maryland General Assembly passed the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, funding was designated for health services with the highest priority placed on supporting more full-time school nurses in high-poverty schools.

As throngs of podcast fans cheered the release of Adnan Syed, the family of 17-year-old murder victim Hae Min Lee cried. A judge agreed to the prosecution and defense’s joint motion to overturn Syed’s guilty conviction after his 23 years in prison. Given only a weekend’s notice of the latest hearing, the Lee family is appealing the outcome, asserting that the judge denied them a meaningful opportunity to participate as mandated by the state’s victim’s rights law. The rationale Baltimore’s chief prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, gave for her decision in her news release, court filings and news conference was flimsy at best. What Mosby did offer the media and the public was a grand distraction from her own legal woes.

This is in response to Josh Kurtz’s article on September 28th, “Report details alarming levels of toxins being dumped in Maryland’s waterways.” It is disturbing to hear about the thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals, including PFAS — “forever chemicals” — being dumped in our Maryland waterways and that the actual release may be much higher. Marylanders are bearing the real human cost to releasing these destructive chemicals into our environment which are linked to increased rates of cancer and disorders that affect human development and reproduction. It’s not just pollution in our waterways. Communities like Curtis Bay, Lothian, Brandywine, and counties including Prince George’s, Calvert, Wicomico, and Worcester are bearing the burden of air and water pollution from power plants, landfills, superfund sites, and industry that is permitted next to residential communities of color.

When it comes to describing Second Chance and its vast operation in South Baltimore, I hardly know where to begin. So I’ll begin at the entrance: The statue of the angel visiting Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and the marble angels to either side — all of that came from the Michigan church where the late Robert Kearns, inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper, worshipped as a boy during the Great Depression. It’s a long story — just about everything at Second Chance is — so here’s the short version: Throughout his life Kearns believed he was guided by a divine presence.

Back in 2015, local government leaders thought they had a plan for moving forward with new transit investments that would better knit together the various elements of the Baltimore area’s existing services, notably the area bus lines, the light rail line and the Metro subway. Then, with the decision of Gov. Larry Hogan to cancel the east-west Red Line, that plan was in disarray. The Red Line was but one component of a 2002 regional transit plan that had been developed by a blue-ribbon task force. Its work product led to more than a decade of planning, intense charettes, countless community meetings, followed by more detailed engineering designs, environmental impact assessments – and a commitment of $900 million in federal funds for construction. Hogan saw it as a “boondoggle.”

The Maryland Hospital Association released findings last month that 1 in 4 hospital nursing positions in the state were vacant. The association called the lack of nurses “the most critical staffing shortage in recent memory.” The same disturbing trend is mirrored across the United States. From 2020 to 2022, hospital vacancies for nursing positions nearly doubled. The total number of registered nurses in the workplace decreased by more than 100,000 in 2021, the largest drop observed in four decades. Perhaps most ominously, the group that left nursing in the highest numbers was nurses under the age of 35. Even before the pandemic, there was growing concern that the aging population would require more health-care services, and stress and burnout were leading nurses to leave the bedside.

Now that school has started back up across the country, I am reflecting on this summer when I, along with 19 afterschool and summer learning professionals from South Carolina, journeyed to Baltimore, not with the primary intention of feasting on crabs (though they were tasty) or rooting for the Orioles during a winning streak, but instead with the purpose of observing a summer learning program garnering national acclaim for Baltimore City Public Schools. Our traveling group of teachers and administrators, school district leaders and nonprofit executives are fellows of SCALE, South Carolina Afterschool Leaders Empowered, a program of the Riley Institute at Furman University. Across the country, afterschool and summer learning programs engage and energize students, build positive relationships and instill a deep love of learning that transcends the school day.

During the 2021 General Assembly session, the first comprehensive legalization bill, House Bill 32 — The Cannabis Legalization and Regulation, Inclusion, Restoration and Rehabilitation Act of 2021 — was introduced and championed by Del. Jazz Lewis. His legislation focused on racial and social justice, ended cannabis prohibition in Maryland, and replaced it with a system to tax and regulate cannabis for adults 21 and older. In the last session, the legislature punted the issue to a referendum on this November’s ballot, which by all accounts appears to enjoy the support of 60%+ of voters.