Maryland education leaders are ushering in a new literacy plan meant to boost student success as part of the statewide shift to the science of reading.

At a board meeting Tuesday, 11 members voted in favor of adopting the fourth version of the policy, with only one member opposing the measure. In June, the original draft faced heavy criticism because of a section requiring schools to hold back struggling third-graders for a repeated school year.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Maryland voters who checked the ‘uncommitted’ box on their Democratic primary ballots this spring are grappling with how to cast their presidential vote in November.

Just under one in ten Marylanders joined the nationwide movement to opt out of voting for then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden in May to demand more action against the war in Gaza. In Baltimore City, 14% of voters did the same.

But the state advocacy group Listen to Maryland isn’t backing a presidential candidate ahead of the November election. And neither is the National Uncommitted Movement, who instead urged supporters to vote “anti-Trump up and down the ballot” in a September statement.

That’s left uncommitted voters divided over how to cast their votes this fall. Three former volunteers for Listen to Maryland all have different plans — but none of them are checking the box for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Coppin State University is creating a direct pipeline for teachers of color to work with students with disabilities in Baltimore City and Harford County — offering free tuition and one-on-one mentorship.

Project POSE and Project SEQUEL, funded by a $2.3 million investment from the U.S. Department of Education, will recruit 40 current school staff or community college students from the two local districts over the next five years.

After two years of classes, participants will graduate with their bachelors degrees in special education — and be matched with a personal mentor during their first year leading a classroom.

Read more at WYPR.

The former site of a coal-fired power plant in eastern Baltimore County is set to become a new waterfront park.

Local, state and federal leaders gathered in Bowleys Quarter Monday to announce the purchase of 85-acres of land next to Carroll Island, where the Charles P. Crane Generating Station operated for over 50 years. The plant closed down in 2018, and was demolished by North Carolina developer Forsite in 2022.

Baltimore County council members voted unanimously last Tuesday to use $10 million of Maryland’s Program Open Space (POS) grants — plus nearly $3 million from the state and federal government — to fund the site’s park transformation.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Student performance on state tests is staying stagnant, with just under half of Maryland K-12 students passing reading exams and less than a quarter achieving math proficiency last spring.

Fifth and eighth graders did even worse on science exams, with the overall fifth grade proficiency rate dropping by 10 percentage points over a one-year period. Gaps also persist across content areas for low-income, multilingual, Black and Hispanic students – as well as those with disabilities.

For example, only 10% of multilingual students achieved proficiency in reading statewide. Less than 7% of students with disabilities passed in math.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Baltimore County school buses are now sporting external cameras designed to catch drivers who illegally pass when students are boarding or exiting.

District leaders teamed up with the local police department to install the monitors from Alabama-based company AngelTrax ahead of the first day of classes Monday. At a press conference in front of Timonium Elementary School, Chief of Police Robert McCullough said driving infractions are an “ongoing problem” for student safety.

“During a one day study about a year ago, we had over 387 cars pass our school buses in Baltimore County – just in one day,” McCullough said. “It’s a much-needed program so that we can protect our students.”

Read more at WYPR.

Baltimore County students at 16 middle and high schools will start each class this year by tucking their cellphones away into clear pouches.

Superintendent Myriam Rogers announced the $15,000 pilot program at a press conference Tuesday, less than a week before the first day of school. The district joins a statewide movement to limit phone access in classes as a way to boost student engagement and reduce social media harm.

“Smartphones and school time simply do not mix,” Rogers said Tuesday. “At the very basic level, if you are focused on technology in the classroom, you’re not focused on the teacher and the learning that needs to occur there.”

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Students at Johns Hopkins University can expect to see a handful of armed police officers for the new university force on campus this fall, said Chief of Police Branville Bard Jr.

The Johns Hopkins Police Department won’t reach its full 100-person staff for a few years, Bard said. But the pool of officers will begin operating at the Homewood, East Baltimore and Peabody campuses under the finalized governing policies released by the department last Wednesday.

Bard said the JHPD will be a “small part of the larger public safety apparatus” at Hopkins.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Workers at nine of 12 schools in the University System of Maryland are now protected under the first-ever system-wide union contract.

The new agreement raises wages, establishes health and safety protections, and guarantees permanent salaried positions for contractual employees after two years of service. The changes affect around 5,700 employees, from Frostburg to the Eastern Shore.

Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union and university leaders gathered at a signing ceremony Friday to mark the official start of the standardized protections. Before, each campus had different contracts, and therefore different working conditions.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

After leading Maryland’s education system temporarily for eight months, Carey Wright is kicking off her own four-year term as the State Superintendent of Schools. And she’s got a lot on her plate.

There’s the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a multi-billion-dollar package of education reforms that has multiple implementation deadlines co-occurring over the next four years.

“This is such a golden opportunity for us to really take advantage of everybody leaning in and heading in the same direction where implementation is concerned,” Wright told WYPR on Monday. “It really has the potential to provide a lot of tremendous opportunities for children.”

Wright said she’s continuing to meet with local school district leaders to hear out and address their concerns about Blueprint implementation — like lags in funding.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Some Baltimore educators and school leaders say Arabic-speaking families — and their children — are flocking to city schools. But not all schools have the resources to help those students succeed.

Mary Ancinec is the principal of John Ruhrah Elementary/Middle School, where 73% of students qualify for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) services. She calls it “a school of many nations.”

“We’ve always historically had a larger English learning population, and we have worked really hard to kind of cater to and build a lot of wraparound services,” Ancinec said.

Ancinec has been working in Baltimore City schools since 1999.

“Throughout the years that I’ve been in Baltimore City schools, I’ve seen a really drastic kind of increase in different language groups — and Arabic speaking students are one of them,” she said. “Each year we get a few more Arabic speaking students.”

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Baltimore teachers are taking as many online college courses as they can to boost their annual salary before the city school district upends its current payment structure at the end of the month.

This year, the top choice for online classes has been Idaho State University. But on June 4, district leaders removed the university from its approved list of institutions — and said they would no longer accept credit from Idaho State after June 1.

The Baltimore Teachers Union says that’s against their contract — so they’ve filed an official grievance with the district.

“Part of the reason there’s been such interest in these courses is because our current pay structure for next year is uncertain,” said Zach Taylor, the union’s director of negotiations. “So teachers are feeling anxious about, ‘what’s the new system going to be?’ And they’ve created this incentive to make sure ‘I get everything I can now.’”

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Governor Wes Moore is ushering in a statewide climate effort through a new executive order, his latest step towards making Maryland achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.

Moore signed the order Tuesday afternoon at Henderson-Hopkins school in East Baltimore — which is expected to become the state’s first community solar energy bank by September. The project will allow 175 low-income families in the surrounding neighborhood to access solar power at a lower cost than their current energy bill.

“There’s a reason we chose here,” Moore said. “The reason that it was important to be in front of these students is not just simply because people say, ‘Well, we’re fighting for their future.’ They’re fighting for their own. They’re already doing the work.”

Lynn Heller, founder of the Climate Access Fund, said the Solar4Us project will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 27,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Baltimore City school communities are mourning the lives of 11 students who were killed by gun violence since last May — and calling for further action to reduce that number to zero.

At the district’s seventh annual Peace and Remembrance ceremony on Thursday morning, school officials joined friends and family of the victims in front of the central office building.

A student choir from ConneXions Community Art School sang an acapella tribute. Community members held signs with each teenagers’ name to serve as a physical marker of the lives lost.

Attendees cried, hugged and stood in a moment of silence.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Maryland voters are contributing to a nationwide trend to vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic presidential primary to push President Joe Biden to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

According to the state board of elections, 9.72% of voters statewide checked the “uncommitted” box. That’s over 56,000 voters. In Baltimore City, 13.86% of voters did the same — and 10.74% did so in Baltimore County.

Maryland’s results trail behind those in other states President Biden won in 2020 — with 19% of Minnesota Democrats and 13.2% of Michigan Democrats voting uncommitted this year.

Anna Evans-Goldstein, one of the organizers for the Listen to Maryland coalition — the group of state organizers who urged voters to check ‘uncommitted’ — said that lag is because Maryland is a “deep blue, very Democratic state.”

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.