A digest of Baltimore news from local sources.
From the Baltimore Sun: Baltimore prepares to welcome students back to school
"With 72 hours left before 84,000 Baltimore students poured into the city's schools for the start of the new school year today, all Keith Scroggins could think about was weeds creeping through cracks in sidewalks.
"'We just can't have that, it's just very unsightly,' he said as he visited schools throughout the district Friday.
"To the average person, weedy sidewalks might seem like a trivial fixation. Not so for the chief operating officer of Maryland's fourth-largest school system whose large portfolio includes all district facilities. To Scroggins, weeds signal carelessness, a lack of attention to detail — not the message he wanted to send on the first day of school.
"Clean sidewalks, and for that matter manicured grass and pruned bushes and trees, are the equivalent of rolling out a red carpet for the city's students, who return to school amid a heat wave that closed 37 Baltimore County schools without air conditioning on Friday and again on Monday.
"Even more city schools lack air conditioning — 76 of the roughly 170 — but district officials said they had no plans to close them. The city doesn't have a policy like the one recently approved by the county to close uncooled schools when the heat index is forecast to be above 90 degrees. Instead, the decision to close schools is made on a case-by-case basis.
"The weekend before the first day of school marks the culmination of a summer cleaning process as crews finish cutting grass, trimming bushes, moving furniture, painting, stripping and waxing floors, stocking schools with bottled water.
"The annual routine comes at a price-tag of at least $500,000, but for Scroggins and other district administrators, the pride of welcoming students back to pristine buildings is priceless.
"'It's the biggest time of the year for me,' Scroggins said. 'The most important thing is that schools look inviting, clean and like a place that parents want to send their kids and keep them excited about learning.'”
Full Article at the Baltimore Sun
From the Washington Post: Maryland tries to strengthen foster care for gay and transgender youths
"Maryland officials are taking steps to create a more welcoming foster-care system for gay, bisexual and transgender children and adolescents, including screening homes for possible bias and providing sensitivity training to case workers.
"The policy directive issued this month by the state Department of Human Resources prohibits conversion therapy and urges foster parents of transgender children to call them by their preferred pronouns and to allow them to dress and groom accordingly.
“'We want to be prepared to be able to support the children along their journey in a way that’s supportive and not punitive,' said Rebecca Jones-Gaston, executive director of social services in the HR department, which oversees the foster-care system in partnership with county agencies.
"There’s no data on how many LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) youths are in Maryland’s foster-care system. Nationally, advocates say such children and adolescents are more likely to be mistreated by their foster families. Many end up leaving those families and living on the street.
"In Maryland, those who work with LGBT youths tell the story of a transgender girl who ended up prostituting herself to survive on the street after she was placed in an all-boys home whose operators forced her to identify as a boy and where other teens bullied her.
"An effeminate gay boy was kicked out of his foster home, and his foster parents paid him $25 to $50 a week to return only during case-worker visits. A bisexual teen who came out to her foster parents says they have refused to look her in the eyes since.
“'They are already traumatized; they have experienced severe neglect or abuse from the people who are supposed to love and protect them unconditionally,' said Ann Marie Binsner, executive director of Court Appointed Special Advocates of Prince George’s County, a nonprofit organization that advocates for foster children.
“'When they come into foster care, they shouldn’t continue to feel that neglect or that rejection because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity. We should be the ones protecting them from that.'
"Maryland has contracted with the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group to start training social-service workers in September, beginning in Prince George’s. The training includes instruction on recognizing subconscious bias, proper language to use with LGBT youths, and how to normalize being gay or transgender.
"Maryland state officials say they haven’t gotten pushback against their new policy, including from religiously affiliated foster-care providers. At an Annapolis hearing last winter on a bill that would have required case workers to screen foster-care placements for possible discrimination, an official with the Christian Arrow Child and Family Ministries told lawmakers that it was already making sure lesbian or gay teens were not being placed with parents who adamantly opposed homosexuality.
"The Human Rights Campaign says 21 states have policies or laws barring discrimination against foster youths based on sexual orientation. Fourteen extend those policies to transgender children.
"Maryland’s new policy does not go as far as those in some other states. For example, it does not require that all foster parents undergo training on working with LGBT youths, as is the case in California, Illinois and New Mexico."
Full Article at the Washington Post
From the Baltimore Sun: Billionaire donors Laura and John Arnold support far more in Maryland than police surveillance
"From low-tech eyeglasses to high-tech spyglasses, the wealthy Texas philanthropists bankrolling secret aerial surveillance of Baltimore are no strangers to public policy initiatives in Maryland that match their charitable vision.
"In the spring, Laura and John Arnold gave $450,000 from their Houston-based foundation to the Johns Hopkins University to support a city initiative to give free glasses to thousands of public school students to study how better vision improves school performance.
"As city and university officials gathered in May to kick off that plan, the Baltimore Police Department's aerial surveillance program was receiving another $240,000 from the couple to ramp up.
"The surveillance program — which has sent a single-engine plane flying 8,000 feet above Baltimore to record hundreds of hours of video — began in January with an earlier, $120,000 gift from the Arnolds to Persistent Surveillance Systems, the department's contractor on an effort that police officials never disclosed to the mayor before starting the monitoring.
"While elected officials are clamoring for answers as to why the public was never informed of the clandestine crime-fighting flights, another question has emerged: Who are these 40-something philanthropists, Laura and John Arnold?
"'The fact that they're so young and dedicated makes them stand out in the philanthropy world,' said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which tracks the giving of the nation's 50 wealthiest donors. 'They're not the type of donors who want their names slapped on a building at a college. They give to advocacy.'
"The couple's charitable giving has spanned the ideological spectrum, from conservative issues such as reforming public pensions to more liberal efforts to fix pretrial criminal processes. Through their personal and foundation gifts, the couple has also provided substantial funding to the American Civil Liberties Union and its foundation, organizations that are joining the chorus of complaints about the Baltimore surveillance program.
"In the past five years, the couple has given away $1.2 billion, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Their foundation has $1.8 billion in assets and awarded $617 million in grants from January 2011 to June 30, 2016, tax and foundation records show.
"The couple also has personally given away nearly $600 million during that time.
"The Arnolds declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, they said the surveillance program dovetails with their strategy to support evidence-based techniques that help police departments fight crime."
Full Article at the Baltimore Sun