Politics

Maryland lawmakers are trying to strengthen the State Board of Education in preparation for the sweeping education reform plan that is poised to become law next month. Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) presented an emergency bill Thursday that would tighten the qualifications for state school board members so that as a whole, the board must have expertise in: antiracism and equity frameworks to make systemic change possible; students with disabilities; multilingual instruction; programs that enhance socioeconomic and demographic diversity in public schools; and implementing innovative education reform.

A number of state senators and their staff have tested positive for COVID-19, Senate President Bill Ferguson said Tuesday. At the start of Tuesday morning’s session, Ferguson said there is an undetermined number of positive rapid tests. Nine of 47 senators were off the floor at the start of the session, though it is not clear how many of those nine had texted positive.

Appointments at Maryland’s COVID-19 mass-vaccination sites will be managed by a new web portal beginning in March, the state’s acting health secretary announced on Monday. Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) and his health chief, Dennis R. Schrader have resisted calls for a state-run sign-up system, but Schrader told lawmakers that “the new pre-registration system will improve the user experience, and better prepare for the day when supplies are very abundant.”

In a city battered by the coronavirus, one biomedical plant is churning out enough vaccine doses to inoculate every resident hundreds of times over. The lifesaving medicine is brewed in stainless steel vats and bottled at subfreezing temperatures — then loaded into trucks that carry the vaccines hundreds of miles away. Most will never return. At the eastern edge of Baltimore, Emergent BioSolutions is manufacturing almost all of the yet-to-be approved Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines for the U.S. population — an anticipated hundreds of millions of doses in the coming months.

The Baltimore Sun is poised to be acquired by a nonprofit founded last month by Stewart Bainum Jr., a Montgomery County-raised business owner who has also been active in Maryland politics and philanthropy. The acquisition would include The Sun, The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, the Carroll County Times and other community newspapers in the Baltimore metro region.

Many homeowners and renters continue to fall behind on monthly payments during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now there’s a renewed push to ensure they don’t lose their homes or get evicted. Maryland has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, according to Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who is hopeful that states will get more help addressing housing issues in President Joe Biden’s $1.9-trillion pandemic-relief package working its way through Congress. Speaking with state lawmakers during a virtual meeting on Tuesday, the Democrat noted that by the end of last year, the delinquency rate on residential properties was 8.8%.