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October 19, 2021

The Chestertown Spy

An Educational News Source for Chestertown Maryland

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Md. Health Secretary Pushes Back as Senators Call for Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines in Schools

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Senators continued to push Maryland Health Secretary Dennis R. Schrader to exercise his authority to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for eligible school-age students Monday.

“I brought this up in the last briefing last month and you weren’t sure that you had the authority to do so and it sounds like this month, you’re still uncertain and not willing to explore that as a possibility,” Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Howard) said at a meeting of the Senate Vaccine Oversight Workgroup Monday. “I hope that next month you’ll be able to bring back some additional considerations as to how you can improve those rates in schools through a mandatory vaccination program in conjunction with [the Maryland State Department of Education].”

According to a presentation from the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability for the Department of Legislative Services, since school has been in session, the sharpest increase in COVID positivity rates in the state has been among children.

About 72% of children between 12 and 17 years old have received at least one shot.

Lam asked Schrader what is being done to encourage eligible minors to get vaccinated.

Schrader said that the Department of Health has “two tracks of priority:” getting booster shots in the arms of the state’s most vulnerable and tracking down the nearly one million eligible Marylanders who have yet to get vaccinated.

But Schrader also clearly demonstrated his disinterest in mandating COVID-19 vaccines for school-aged students.

Under Maryland’s education code, the Department of Health has the ability to issue regulations that require students to be inoculated to attend school.

“You do have the tool to be able to require vaccination of students going into schools,” said Lam. “Is that right, is that something that you’re looking at?”

Schrader responded “not at the moment.” He said there have been conversations about working with school systems to increase the vaccination rate in 12- to 17-year-olds but he wants to respect local school districts’ authority.

“We really need to rely on the schools to help us with this,” Schrader said. “They’re autonomous and we want to make sure we respect that autonomy in working with them.”

Lam, a physician, pushed back and said the state is falling short on protecting its kids.

“I am concerned about the spread of COVID in our schools and you have a tool that you can use as the secretary to require this to be required vaccination and students coming into our schools, but it sounds as though [the Department of Health] is not reaching for this tool or is not willing to do so,” he said.

Schrader said the health department’s focus now is increasing the rate for routine vaccinations in elementary school students.

“We want to make sure that those are taken care of, but we’ll go back and take a look at your suggestion,” he said.

After other senators pressed the health department to take more decisive action, Sen. James C. Rosapepe (D-Prince George’s) grew frustrated and asked Schrader where the buck stops: with the State Department of Education or with the Department of Health?

“So, we have the adults pointing fingers at each other while the kids are suffering and the parents are suffering,” he said.

Rosapepe told Schrader that he should exercise the power he has to mandate the vaccine in schools.

But, “if for whatever political reason” he decides not to do that, Rosapepe suggested that the Department of Health “aggressively work with the school systems to identify in every school which kids have been vaccinated which kids haven’t been vaccinated” through the state’s ImmuNet vaccination record system and bring mobile vaccination units to those locations.

Rosapepe also proposed rating school systems like the Department of Health rates nursing homes based on their rates of vaccination.

“A couple of suggestions if you’re not willing to go with mandatory vaccinations,” he said.

By Hannah Gaskill

Gov. Hogan Orders Assessment of Ventilation, Air Filtration in School Buildings

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Governor Larry Hogan today announced that he is directing the State Superintendent of Schools and the Interagency Commission on School Construction to conduct an immediate statewide assessment of ventilation and air filtration in Maryland public school buildings.

The governor made the announcement at Wednesday’s meeting of the Board of Public Works:

“I know we are all pleased to see students returning to in-person instruction in every school system across the state. Unfortunately, this week, schools all over Baltimore City, including 31 just yesterday, had to dismiss students early due to the lack of proper air conditioning.

“It’s unbelievable to me that this is still happening after the Comptroller and I have worked together for the last six years to push to get every school air conditioned, and to provide record funding for every school to be air conditioned, and our nonstop efforts to hold schools accountable.

“We were successful in requiring Baltimore City to reluctantly create a plan to finally bring air conditioning to all their schools, even against fierce opposition from legislative leaders. But in spite of them putting plans together, the work was not actually completed.

“We established a Healthy Schools Facilities Fund to provide additional state-funded grants to public schools specifically to make urgently needed emergency air conditioning and heating upgrades. Baltimore City returned the money to the state after failing to spend it on the improvements.

“Our administration has provided seven years of record funding to our schools—all of our schools across the state and even more to Baltimore City schools. Among the 100 largest school systems in America, Baltimore is the third highest funded school system, which makes it even more inexcusable.

“Earlier this year, we enacted a historic school construction plan with record funding to make sure that all school buildings across the entire state were modern, safe, efficient, and air conditioned. Protecting students from the sweltering heat is critically important, and city leaders have continued to fail in this regard. But the problem goes far beyond that now because of COVID-19.

“Our public health experts have repeatedly stressed that proper ventilation is a critical tool to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. The CDC specifically recommended maximizing building ventilation and improving the level of air filtration as much as possible through the use of high-efficiency HEPA filtration units.

“And we have provided more than $3 billion in additional federal dollars in relief funding to the school systems in Maryland specifically for pandemic-related costs, including improvements to HVAC and ventilation, and filtration systems for safer school buildings for our kids. And yet, even with those billions of dollars to address these issues and with the school year already underway, city schools are still unairconditioned, and it’s unclear even which schools or school systems have properly utilized all these billions in funding.

“After months of requesting this information, we’re no longer asking. So today, I’m directing the State Superintendent of Schools and the Interagency Commission on School Construction to immediately provide us a report on ventilation and air filtration systems, district by district and school by school, and we will be holding school systems accountable for these financial resources and the way that they have been utilized to ensure that safe and healthy environments are in our school buildings for all of our kids.”

Experts Support Mask Mandates for Students but Say Vaccine Mandates Will Be More Difficult

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As many students across Maryland return to school this week while the delta variant continues to drive the state’s COVID-19 case rates higher, requiring masks inside school buildings is the “lowest hanging fruit” schools could take to protect against the coronavirus, public health experts told lawmakers on Monday.

“Children with masks on play just as hard and learn just as well as children without masks, but they’re protected from acquiring COVID and spreading it to others,” Karen L. Kotloff, a professor of pediatrics in the University of Maryland Medical System, told the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee.

“I think that is the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest intervention that can be done,” she continued. “Masks are easy.”

Meanwhile, other measures such as requiring that students and teachers to get vaccinated or for students to maintain physical distance in classrooms are more difficult, she continued.

Mandating masks is a low-cost way to reduce COVID-19 transmission rates, said Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Monday’s legislative meeting came after the Maryland State Board of Education passed a universal mask mandate for public schools in a hastily-scheduled meeting last week. Previously, the decision to issue masking mandates for students, teachers and staff was left to local school boards in reopening decisions to be approved by Maryland State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury.

By law, the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review (AELR) has to approve the State Board of Education’s emergency regulation for it to go into effect. The committee is slated to vote on the matter at a public meeting on Sept. 14, allowing some school systems to start the school year without requiring masks.

Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan (R) has the ability to waive the 10-business-day waiting period required before the AELR committee can vote on the emergency regulation, but Hogan said Monday that he does not plan to do so.

“I’m not going to create a state of emergency to waive the ability for legislators to hear from the citizens, they just have to do the process that they normally do,” Hogan told WBFF-TV.

Republican lawmakers also implored the committee to not rush the 10-day review period to allow for a deliberative process.

“We have serious concerns regarding the State Board of Education’s unprecedented usurpation of local control in mandating masking for students across Maryland,” a statement from the House Minority Caucus said.

During the Monday briefing, Sen. Jason C. Gallion (R-Cecil and Harford) suggested that only children with underlying medical conditions should wear N95s — tight-fitting, high-filtration medical masks — “instead of making all children wear these cloth masks.”

But Kotloff highlighted that healthy children could also contract the coronavirus.

“You don’t have to have an underlying condition to have a fatal COVID infection, and so how do you know which child that’s going to be … to protect that child’s life?” she said. Furthermore, the more a virus passes back and forth among a population, the more a virus can mutate and become more virulent, she continued.

“Pretty much anything that can happen to an adult can happen to a child,” Kotloff said. Longer-term effects of contracting the coronavirus can also afflict children, such as cognitive impairments, fatigue and chronic respiratory issues.

Nationally, the number of children with COVID-19 grew from 26,000 to 200,000 in the last week, according to Kotloff.

Sen. Bryan Simonaire (R-Anne Arundel) questioned whether it was a good policy to have a “one size fits” approach if different areas in the state have different transmission rates.

But Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George’s) underscored that every county in the state currently has a high or substantial transmission rate of 50-100 or more cases per 100,000.

“When everything is substantial, then I think it makes sense that the policy is fairly uniform,” Sell said. “When things come down, people can make some more of those nuanced decisions at lower levels.”

Mandating Vaccinations?

Montgomery and Prince George’s counties public school systems are requiring teachers and staff to show proof of a COVID-19 vaccination or to undergo weekly tests.

But mandating vaccines for children will be harder than mandating masks, said Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. If a vaccine mandate is implemented before it has widespread public support, it risks backlash which can significantly undermine the immunization effort.

However, the bar is different for teachers and staff, he continued. “That’s a workplace mandate, which is different. And teachers get to choose whether or not they want to be teachers and where they work and it’s an occupational hazard, so I think it’s a lower bar,” he said.

When people feel forced to get inoculated, “that’s frightening for people,” Kotloff said. Allowing people to express their fears about the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as informing them of the science is the best way to move forward, she continued.

By Elizabeth Shwe

Md. School Board to Vote Today on Requiring Masks; Franchot, State Senators Back Statewide Mandate

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The Maryland State Board of Education will hold a meeting this afternoon to determine if students will be required to wear masks during the 2021-2022 academic year as the delta variant continues to drive the state’s COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates higher.

​​“I believe that having an in-school mask mandate is going to help us to meet our goal of having students stay in classrooms and minimize the disruption that will be caused by quarantines,” said Rachel McCusker, the teacher representative of the Maryland State Board of Education, at the end of a marathon meeting held Tuesday.

The board voted unanimously to meet at 3 p.m. today to discuss the matter further.

Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Mohammed Choudury said that he was looking to see if he had legal backing to deny school systems’ COVID-19 plans if they follow all of the State Department of Education and Department of Health recommendations except for universal masking.

“I have been very clear, all school systems should start the school year with masking,” Choudury said early during the eight-hour meeting Tuesday.

Thus far, each jurisdiction has been tasked with deciding its own school reopening plan, which must be approved by Choudury.

To assuage public concern, Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) on Monday tweeted a map created by the Department of Legislative Services detailing masking and vaccine mandates by school district.

According to the map, which was last updated Tuesday, 14 of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions plan to require students to wear masks. On Wednesday night, Cecil County Superintendent of Schools Jeff Lawson announced that the school district would require masks for students and staff at the beginning of the school year.

State senators sent a letter Wednesday to the Maryland State Board of Education, imploring board members to issue an emergency regulation requiring a universal masking mandate for students and teachers across the state.

“Continuous in-person instruction this school year is critical, and we must protect students’ ability to learn with other children in school buildings statewide throughout the year,” Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) said in a statement. “We urge the State Board of Education to promulgate a temporary emergency regulation mandating that all children, faculty, and staff wear masks in every Maryland elementary and secondary school and congregate setting with children in any county with a substantial or high rate of COVID-19 transmission, as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Should the board decide to issue the masking requirement for students and staff across the state, the emergency regulation would need to be approved by the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review (AELR). The committee is led by Sen. Sarah K. Elfreth (D-Anne Arundel) and Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg (D-Baltimore City).

Because of its emergency status, the masking mandate would only be in effect for 180 days before its expiration.

With Cecil County now requiring masks, only four of Maryland’s 24 school systems have chosen to keep masking optional. Several of those jurisdictions have some of the state’s highest rates of COVID-19 transmission. And three of the four — Dorchester, Somerset, Worcester — are on the Eastern Shore.

Maryland Comptroller Peter V.R. Franchot (D), a candidate for governor in 2022, issued a statement Thursday morning saying he also favored a mask mandate for public schools.

“Like so many Marylanders, I’m greatly concerned about the surge of COVID-19 cases in our state and across the country,” he said in the statement. “This surge comes as families are preparing to send their kids back to school — with great uncertainty on how the Delta variant will impact the health and welfare of students, teachers and staff. The COVID infection rate among children is the highest it’s ever been.

“That’s why I support a statewide mask mandate for schools, mandatory vaccinations for school employees, and daily testing for school employees who have religious or health exemptions,” Franchot said. “Additionally, I call on the state to work with local governments and school systems to ensure that all eligible children, educators and staff have convenient access to vaccines. School systems must also provide parents with the flexibility to decide the mode of learning that’s best for their children, whether it’s in-person, hybrid or virtual.

“Our collective fight against this pandemic that has killed nearly 10,000 Marylanders and infected more than 489,000 of our friends and neighbors is far from over. When it comes to the health and welfare of our children, we can’t take enough precautions to ensure that they are able to safely learn,” he said. “What’s more, these necessary health precautions aren’t just for our students, but also for our educators and staff. They and their loved ones deserve the certainty of knowing they won’t be jeopardizing their health to do the job they love.”

Baltimore County Executive John A. Olszewski Jr. (D) declared a state of emergency there Tuesday morning in an effort to help the county request and procure aid and resources from the state and federal government.

Per a Tuesday news release from Olszewski’s office, the Baltimore County Council will hold a voting session next week to determine if the county should remain under the state of emergency beyond August.

“While we’ve made undeniable progress in our fight against this deadly virus, the rapid emergence of the Delta variant has made it clear that we need access to every tool in our toolbox to be able to respond to it,” Olszewski said in a statement. “We remain committed to doing whatever is necessary to keep our residents as safe as possible and to ensure that when our children go back to school next week they can remain where they belong: inside the classroom.”

“We want to keep our kids in class and keep our schools open,” Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman (D) said in support of County Superintendent George Arlotto’s decision to mandate that students and teachers mask up. “That’s the reason that we have the mask requirement.”

Robert Mosier, chief communications officer for Anne Arundel County Public Schools, said discussions regarding vaccine requirements for teachers are underway. Pittman issued a vaccine mandate for county employees earlier this month.

According to Anne Arundel Health Officer Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman, the county has 55 patients hospitalized for COVID-19 at Anne Arundel Medical Center and University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center. He also reported that six people died of COVID-19-related causes in Anne Arundel County in the past week — “the most deaths we’ve had in three months.”

Asked what it would take for him to institute a county-wide mask mandate, Pittman said that he would need to reinstate a local state of emergency, but he doesn’t have enough support from the County Council to do so.

“We don’t have the authorization,” Pittman said. “We had it under the governor’s emergency order and we had it under the county’s emergency declaration … but that we no longer have.”

Pittman said that, to reinstate the county’s state of emergency, five of seven Anne Arundel County councilmembers would have to support it. He said that three county council members “have opposed every mandate that we’ve put into effect.”

“So we don’t believe that we have the votes on the council to do that,” he said.

By Hannah Gaskill and Bruce DePuyt

Most Mid-Shore Students Must Mask Inside Schools

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Most Mid-Shore public school students will be required to wear masks inside when classes begin for the coming school year.

Four of the region’s five school systems have largely adopted guidance from the Centers for Disease Control that recommends universal indoor masking, regardless of vaccination status, for anyone age 2 and older who enters a school.

Dorchester County Public Schools has not issued a mask requirement for students, but is encouraging unvaccinated students and staff to wear masks inside school buildings.

A federal mandate requires masks on all bus transportation nationwide, so all students will be required to wear masks while riding a school bus.

CDC guidance for schools includes:

  • Students benefit from in-person learning, and safely returning to in-person instruction in the fall 2021 is a priority.
  • Vaccination is the leading public health prevention strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Promoting vaccination can help schools safely return to in-person learning as well as extracurricular activities and sports.
  • Due to the circulating and highly contagious Delta variant, CDC recommends universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.
  • In addition to universal indoor masking, CDC recommends schools maintain at least 3 feet of physical distance between students within classrooms to reduce transmission risk. When it is not possible to maintain a physical distance of at least 3 feet, such as when schools cannot fully re-open while maintaining these distances, it is especially important to layer multiple other prevention strategies, such as screening testing.
  • Screening testing, ventilation, handwashing and respiratory etiquette, staying home when sick and getting tested, contact tracing in combination with quarantine and isolation, and cleaning and disinfection are also important layers of prevention to keep schools safe.
  • Students, teachers, and staff should stay home when they have signs of any infectious illness and be referred to their healthcare provider for testing and care.
  • Many schools serve children under the age of 12 who are not eligible for vaccination at this time. Therefore, this guidance emphasizes implementing layered prevention strategies (e.g., using multiple prevention strategies together consistently) to protect students, teachers, staff, visitors, and other members of their households and support in-person learning.
  • Localities should monitor community transmission, vaccination coverage, screening testing, and occurrence of outbreaks to guide decisions on the level of layered prevention strategies (e.g., physical distancing, screening testing).

The CDC’s Covid Data Tracker shows that community transmission levels currently are high in all 5 Mid-Shore counties, for Maryland as a whole, and across the United States.

Kent County:

Kent County Public Schools will require face coverings for all students, staff, and visitors inside school buildings and the central office.

“The masking requirement for vaccinated and unvaccinated students and staff will preserve our ability to continue in-person instruction and help to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our schools,” Superintendent Karen M. Couch wrote in a statement.

Other key mitigation strategies include:

  • Promote frequent hand washing and hygiene.
  • Enhanced cleaning protocols.
  • Social distancing of 3 ft. whenever possible.
  • Self-screening for COVID-19.
  • Contact tracing and quarantining.

Couch said the school system “encourages all eligible persons to get fully vaccinated to protect yourself and those around you.”

Talbot County:

The county’s level of community transmission has been high since Aug. 6.

In an Aug. 17 statement, Superintendent Kelly Griffith said school districts had “received updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Maryland Department of Health (MDH), and the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE)” and recommendations from the Talbot County health officer in developing its layered prevention strategies.

Those strategies, effective immediately, are:

  • Requiring universal indoor masking for individuals age 2 years and older, including students/children, teachers, staff and visitors, regardless of vaccination status.
  • Promoting vaccination among teachers, staff and students.
  • Maintaining physical distancing of three feet to the extent possible without excluding students from in-person learning.
  • Offering rapid COVID-19 testing in schools if needed.
  • Maintaining adequate ventilation of all buildings to support air quality
  • Following health department guidance regarding contact tracing, isolation and quarantine for staff or students who are sick, have COVID-19 symptoms, are exposed to someone with COVID-19 or test positive for COVID-19 according to the Talbot County Health Department Quarantine Policy .

“While this is not the way we hoped to be starting the school year, we will continue to monitor the situation on a weekly basis and will make revisions accordingly,” Griffith wrote. “The good news is that we have 88% of our staff and almost 50% of our 12 -17 year-olds vaccinated so we remain encouraged and hopeful about a healthy and productive school year.”

Dorchester County:

Dorchester County Public Schools recommends unvaccinated students and staff to wear masks inside school facilities.

In an Aug. 3 statement, Superintendent W. David Bromwell and Dorchester County Health Officer Roger Harrell said:

“Masking continues to be the most talked about subject as we enter the 2021-2022 school year. Dorchester County has become a High-Rate transmission county in Maryland, almost overnight.

“DCPS will do everything possible to keep our students and staff safe while attending school. It is possible that an individual DCPS school will be required to ‘Mask Up’ if infection rates and COVID transmissions are increasing within a building.”

The school system and the health department had reviewed the latest guidance from the CDC and the federal education department, and the county’s COVID-19 statistics, according to the statement. As a result, Dorchester schools will encourage the following:

  • Follow Federal mandate of masking on all bus transportation throughout the county
  • Unvaccinated students and staff to wear masks in all facilities
  • Those who are eligible to receive a vaccination
  • Ask staff and families to pre-screen for symptoms of illness daily
  • Hand washing throughout the day, especially before and after meals
  • Individual materials of instruction (no sharing of supplies)
  • When possible, always use social distancing of a minimum of 3 feet within DCPS buildings
  • Implement a high level of cleaning, especially high touch areas in schools and busses

County schools also will continue to provide the following:

  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), including hand sanitizer to students and staff
  • Ongoing professional development to staff, families, and students involving COVID 19 and its variants
  • MERV rated filters throughout DCPS HVAC systems
  • COVID screening for students and staff whenever possible
  • Multiple vaccination opportunities for staff and eligible students leading up to the 2021-2022 school year

Caroline County:

“Masks are now required for all individuals inside Caroline County Public Schools buildings, regardless of vaccination status, when students are present,” Caroline County Public Schools said in an Aug. 17 post on its website.

“We are laser focused on our primary goal of keeping the school doors open five full days a week for in-person learning for all students,” Interim Superintendent Derek Simmons told the school board in an Aug. 17 special meeting.

“Given the current circumstances, we have a much better chance of meeting that goal if everyone is wearing a mask while indoors.”

According to the post, the decision was based on several important factors:

  • Children 11 and younger are not yet eligible for the vaccine, and significant numbers of students 12 and older remain unvaccinated.
  • The Delta variant spreads more easily than previous variants, and can be spread by vaccinated individuals. Throughout the summer, the number of young people contracting the virus has increased.
  • According to CDC’s data tracker, Caroline County has been in the substantial or high range for community transmission since early August.
  • Based on CDC contact tracing guidance, if an unmasked student tests positive, nearby students must quarantine, even if they were wearing masks. However, if both the positive case and the contacts are masked, the contacts may stay in school.
  • The CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Caroline County Health Department all recommend a mask requirement for student and staff safety, and as a way to enable schools to remain open.
  • The Draft Reopening Plan Survey comments indicated that while some respondents wanted masks to remain a choice, a majority felt strongly that masks should be required.

Board President Jim Newcomb urged older students, “If you are comfortable with being vaccinated, be a leader in your school and get the vaccine. This is the only way under these conditions to get your life and your friends’ lives as close to normal as possible.”

Queen Anne’s County:

“Approved face coverings must be worn in all QACPS buildings,” the school system said in an Aug. 23 post on its website.

In a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), the school system said not requiring masks would result in a larger number of students being quarantined and absent from school if an unmasked student tests positive for COVID-19.

“If a student were to choose not to wear a face covering and tests positive for COVID-19, the unvaccinated students around that child (masked or unmasked) are then required to be quarantined.

“However, if all students have face coverings and at least socially distant in the classroom, only the child testing positive would miss school days.

“There may be other settings such as the bus or the cafeteria where social distancing cannot be maintained.

“Our best chance at keeping classrooms and schools safe and open is to require everyone to wear face coverings and maintain social distancing whenever possible.”

Quarantining

Diagrams from Caroline and Queen Anne’s county schools highlight the effectiveness of masks in limiting the number of students who must quarantine if a student tests positive for COVID-19.

With 3-foot spacing and all students wearing masks, only the student testing positive for COVID-19 would have to quarantine in three classroom seating diagrams, according to Caroline schools.

Without masks, 6 to 8 other students sitting near the student who tested positive also would have to quarantine and miss school. Those students would be considered close contacts at high risk of getting COVID-19.

A diagram from Queen Anne’s schools notes the differences between old and current quarantine guidelines.

The previous guidelines would have required mass student quarantine if one student tested positive.

Under the current guidelines, with everyone masked and remaining three feet apart, the student who tested positive would have to quarantine. Those within close proximity would only have to quarantine if they had symptoms.

Q&A with New State School Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury

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On July 1, Mohammed Choudhury began his new job as the state superintendent of Maryland. Choudhury arrived in Maryland two weeks ago from Texas, where he was known for his innovative initiatives when it came to poverty and race in the San Antonio and Dallas school districts. 

Maryland lawmakers and education leaders have said they are looking forward to a reinvigoration of the state’s public school system with his arrival, but also warn that he is undertaking a difficult job, especially coming from out-of-state and with a multi-billion-dollar, decade-long education reform plan that starts this year. 

In an interview with Maryland Matters reporter Elizabeth Shwe, Choudhury talked about how he is settling in Maryland and how he plans to lead the state school system. 

This is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Maryland Matters: What do you think of Maryland so far and what are you most looking forward to doing in this state? 

Choudhury: Maryland is known as America in Miniature, so I am excited to live that experience out. I’m excited to taste all kinds of crab cakes in Maryland, which sets the standard for what a good crab cake is. I recently tried Jerry’s Seafood in Prince George’s County and G&M Restaurant, and both have been really great. I have a list that is like 20 deep and counting, and so I plan to form my own opinion on what the best crab cake is. 

I feel the diversity in Maryland, whether I’m just getting coffee or at the gas station or walking here in downtown Baltimore or figuring out where I’m going to do my dry cleaning — Maryland is very diverse and it reminds me of my upbringing in the Hollywood region. I went to school with Korean Americans, Latinos and Blacks, and I was the only Bengali kid. But it also reminds me of what the future face of this country will be.

I’m also looking forward to putting down roots and expanding my family here. Right now, it’s just me and my wife. I’m looking forward to having children here — how exciting would it be to have children go through an education system during the Blueprint era? That should be fun and exciting.

MM: How has your first week as a state superintendent been so far? 

Choudhury: It’s been very exciting. It is what I hoped it would be, which is a lot of positive energy and a feeling of what’s possible in the next decade to bring high-quality education to every child. I want to be able to channel that energy into the next phase of educational progress here with our local school systems. 

Right now my goal is to look, listen and learn, so I am talking with every subdivision here at the Maryland State Department of Education. I’d like to meet the entire team. I am a high-energy person, I like to stay busy, I like to have purpose in what I’m doing. My interactions so far have reinforced all of those things about myself.

MM: How do you plan to foster good relationships with local school systems and teachers? What do you want them to know about you? 

Choudhury: I am very much an experiential learner, so I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time in our local school systems, visiting schools, and hosting roundtables with groups of students and families throughout every county. 

I’m looking forward to shadowing students — that is something that I especially like to do … just hang out with this student and take classes and do assignments with them for a couple of hours or half the day. I did that a lot in San Antonio and within a school year, I would end up shadowing between 45 to 60 students across the pre-K to 12 spectrum.

I usually ask the school principal to choose a student for me to shadow, and the only thing I want beforehand is a profile of who the student is. But then for the next student, I put some general guidance — I would ask to shadow an English language learner, or a student who is having behavioral challenges or a student who is performing at an advanced level or two levels behind. My goal is to experience that day as that student, and then I meet with the principal and I just share what I experienced.

For me, it informs what’s happening in our school systems because what happens each and every day in the classroom is what we’re all here to do, from all the way up from the state board on down. It helps me become a much more informed and smarter person when I come to think about what we need to do to enhance that experience of that child or to continue to reinforce it. 

I’ve been making calls to introduce myself to the school superintendents of our local school system. I’m not all the way through all 24 yet, but one of the things I’ve been asking them is if I have permission just to shadow students, and so far, they have all said yes. 

I want teachers to know that I am obsessive about uncovering best practices, and my job is to channel the energy of best practices and push that up and down and across our state so it reaches more kids with urgency. 

I want teachers to know that my calendar will have sacred time, in which I will be out of downtown Baltimore on a bi-weekly basis. During those times, I do not want meetings other than what I am doing out in the community: shadowing a student, walking with a superintendent, or meeting an advocacy organization to better understand their needs.

MM: How do you feel about going from leading a school district of around 50,000 students to an entire state education system? How do you feel about holding a job that will require working with lawmakers and the governor?

Choudhury: Scale to me is not scary. I come from Los Angeles, California, where I was groomed as an educator and served about 700,000 students, and I worked also in the nonprofit community as well as with the district school system there. 

Then I worked in Dallas, as their Chief of Transformation and Innovation, and they have about 160,000 students. And then in San Antonio I held a similar role with expanded responsibilities and they have around 50,000 students. 

But one of the things I would hope people would see is the work that I do — I’m constantly thinking about scale. A lot of my work shaped legislation at the state level in Texas, and Texas serves 5.5 million children. Texas adopted a different way to measure poverty and respond to poverty, and that is touching every single school system, including charter schools, in Texas. 

Texas has a very different legislative body, but at the end of the day, it requires sharing the research on why this matters and working with leaders of the legislative body, as well as within the community to help come to the best idea. 

I feel like, in Maryland, I will get to do that more frequently, but this is not a foreign concept to me. The work that I have done — it has resonated nationally. So, I am looking forward to being able to shape the educational landscape in Maryland with the Blueprint as a very strong guide towards what comes next.

I left the classroom because I was frustrated with the central office messing things up for educators. The schools I taught at — we would do great things for students, and they would go off to the next school. But then somewhere across that pre-K to 12 spectrum, some of the kids would fall off. They would get lost in the system or that success would get set back, and I told myself — I need to be in the rooms where these decisions are being made to get it right for kids and educators. That’s the path I set myself on when I left the classrooms and here I am today.

MM: What are you most looking forward to with the Blueprint? 

Choudhury: There’s so many great things in the Blueprint. It really is a super bill and roadmap towards building a great education system for our state, which can mean many, many things for our country. 

I really do call it a true guide that came about as a result of an adequacy study. You normally don’t see states opt into adequacy studies on their own — usually they have to get forced into an adequacy study, or be pushed for by advocates to really truly uncover what it costs to provide a high quality education. 

The famous Rodriguez vs. San Antonio case — at the end of the day what that case came down to was: what was the cost to provide a high quality education to children living in abject poverty in that school district? Because the other school districts that were not that far away in a highly segregated setting were getting a completely different educational experience. 

The Blueprint is a long bill, but I read through it and I will continue to read through it multiple times. I am excited about the fact that it is focusing on expanding early childhood education — it all starts there. I am looking forward to the Blueprint expanding how we prepare educators in the state, the career ladders of educators, and raising the pay for educators, because that is long overdue. 

I am also excited about looking at the funding disparities across different school systems and making sure that targeted funding is differentiated based on the depth of poverty. Given my background, that is something that’s going to tug at my heartstrings … it’s just an obsession about getting that right, given my background in that area. 

This Blueprint is a once-in-a-generation moment to build a high-quality education system and I don’t not want to miss this opportunity to get it right with all of our stakeholders. Everyone is fully engaged right now. I bet other state education superintendents are jealous of me. 

MM: In San Antonio, you didn’t always see eye-to-eye with the teachers union — can you tell me more about that relationship? And what kind of relationship do you hope to forge with the teachers unions here? 

Choudhury: I have always had working relationships with every stakeholder, including our professional associations and unions. That is the relationship our administration had in San Antonio — we had something written into our policy that is very unique for a school system in a right-to-work state like Texas, where we met with our union once a month to talk about various issues. 

That relationship was always a working relationship and collaboration for specific initiatives. Did we always agree? No, we did not always agree. I would like for anyone to point me to something where everyone is in universal agreement with something. People debate over the color of a wall. But at the end of the day, my decisions will be guided by what’s best for kids and what the research says is best for kids. 

I will respect the views of everyone, and that doesn’t mean we will always agree when it comes to strategy and direction. But we will listen to one another, and so I’m looking forward to meeting with the Maryland State Education Association, to be able to share ideas and find points of collaboration. There might be moments where we won’t always agree. And that’s not just with the union, that can be other stakeholder groups as well too. 

MM: What have you evaluated as strengths and weaknesses of Maryland’s education system so far? 

Choudhury: I can’t answer that yet because I’m in the learning phase, but the only thing I could share is the findings from the Kirwan report, as well as what the data shows. Maryland has a reputation of high quality education, no doubt, but gaps exist, both in opportunity and learning, so there is work to be done.

The growth area is that excellence needs to be true for every child, regardless of their background, especially for our historically disadvantaged subgroups.

By Elizabeth Shwe

Hogan Announces End of COVID-19 State of Emergency in Maryland

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Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) announced the forthcoming end of the Maryland public health emergency on Tuesday — one year, 3 months and 10 days since the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed have reached the state.

“With all of this amazing progress and thanks, in large part, to the hard work, sacrifices and the vigilance of the people in Maryland, we have finally reached the light at the end of that long tunnel,” Hogan said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

On March 5, 2020, Hogan announced three positive cases of COVID-19, initiating the beginning of the state of emergency.

After 461,392 positive cases, 9,742 deaths and 18 executive renewals, the state of emergency will officially end July 1, doing away with suspended state regulations and mask mandates.

Private business owners and other facilities reserve the right to require patrons to be masked inside of their establishments.

“But there will not be any legal mandate from the state for wearing masks at any location anywhere in the state,” said Hogan, who added that masking will not be required at public schools, summer camps and childcare facilities.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether local school systems will be able to maintain stricter mask requirements.

The governor also announced Tuesday that the state will be extending a 45-day grace period for residents to update documents, like driver’s licenses, and the eviction moratorium.

Both of these grace periods will end on Aug. 15.

“Every single day since that day, last March, together, we have faced immense and unprecedented challenges,” Hogan said. “We’ve been through so much over the past 15 months. But just look at how far we’ve come together to reach this hopeful point.”

Hogan reflected on the state’s success in creating an infrastructure to fight the virus, from reopening closed hospitals to standing up a network of thousands of contact tracers to slow the virus’ spread.

According to the Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard, more than 3.1 million Marylanders have been fully vaccinated.

More than 6.5 million doses have been administered, “not only meeting but exceeding our goal of reaching 70% of all adults [at least partially] vaccinated by Memorial Day,” Hogan said.

While he announced the end of the state of emergency, Hogan implored unvaccinated Marylanders to get the vaccine, stressing that as things return to normal people are still at risk of contracting the virus and its variants.

“At this point, there’s simply no excuse for not getting vaccinated,” he said. “Vaccines are safe, they’re effective and they’re readily available everywhere.”

By Hannah Gaskill

Md. Board of Education Declares All Schools Should Return to Full In-Person Learning This Fall

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Maryland’s State Board of Education passed a resolution Tuesday directing all schools to return to in-person learning for a full 180-day school year starting this fall.

Any exemptions would require state board approval. And the board would be able to revisit the resolution if the COVID-19 pandemic worsens, said Clarence Crawford, the state school board’s president.

According to State Superintendent Karen B. Salmon, 11 school systems are open for 70% of their students for more than three days per week and five school systems are open for less than 40% of their students, for mostly two days a week.

In the largest five school districts — Anne Arundel, Charles, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties and Baltimore City — which account for 65% of Maryland students, only about 32% are receiving in-person instruction, Salmon added.  

“That’s way too many students who have not had, or don’t have currently, access to a normal classroom learning experience now for more than a year,” Salmon told board members. “It may be a very long time before we know the true impact of the pandemic on public education.”

Board members agreed that requiring teachers to teach both in-person and virtually was unsustainable. Teachers should not have a continued expectation to teach in a hybrid model next year, board member Susan Getty said. “Our teachers are fatigued, frustrated and looking for the end that’s in sight,” Getty said.

Lori Morrow, the parent representative to the board, said she worried that the resolution was worded with a “negative tone” that “is almost a threat” to certain school districts over others.

Additionally, the resolution was not on the board’s published agenda, which board member Rachel McCusker, the teacher member of the board, raised as a concern. “I believe that we are a public board who should have full transparency in anything that we discuss in our meetings,” she said. “I do believe things like they should have been put out to the public prior [to meetings].

Morrow said board members received the resolution only one day prior to the meeting. The resolution was uploaded to MSDE’s website late Tuesday afternoon.

However, Jean Halle, vice president of the board, said public comment was not necessary because requiring schools to reopen to in-person learning is simply reinstating existing policy and responds to the local school systems’ request for clearer guidance.

“This is really about equity. To have some students have access to an in-classroom experience  and to have others not have access makes a huge difference in terms of … their academic outcomes,” Halle said.

Unlike a mandate, the resolution “is a formal statement of the Board reaffirming existing state law and regulation,” said Lora Rakowski, spokeswoman for the Maryland State Department of Education.

None of the 24 local school systems were consulted about developing the resolution, said Mary Pat Fannon, executive director of the Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland.

Cheryl Bost, president of Maryland State Education Association, the largest teacher union in the state, said she thought the resolution was unnecessary.

“I found it grandstanding on the part of the state superintendent,” Bost said. “All of our schools are working hard to open up schools in full in the fall.”

The state school board also approved a motion to request a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education to postpone federally mandated English and math assessments until fall and to not require science assessments.

Baltimore, Frederick and Howard counties school systems provided written comment that they supported the waiver.

If approved, students will take shorter diagnostic tests, with the English section lasting 2 hours and 20 minutes and the math section lasting 1 hour and 20 minutes. MSDE had initially proposed standardized tests in the spring that could take up to more than seven hours, but changed course when concerns arose that standardized testing this spring would take too much instructional time that students have lost during the pandemic.

The board was also briefed on the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a sweeping education reform bill that was enacted without the signature of Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) earlier this month.

“It is a very time intensive process,” Salmon said of the 10-year Blueprint implementation timeline. “We’re working very hard every day to plan and try to have the structure to get this work done but it is very, very burdensome.”

Presiding officers of the General Assembly and Hogan have yet to select people for a nominating committee that will be responsible for selecting seven members of a new Accountability and Implementation Board. The board is responsible for developing the Blueprint implementation plan and has authority over the Maryland State Department of Education, if they come into conflict.

Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) is finalizing appointees and will announce them “soon,” said his chief of staff, Yaakov “Jake” Weissmann. House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County) and Hogan did not respond for comment.

While the state school board is figuring out how to implement the Blueprint with fidelity, it should also “begin to figure out how [they] will develop a working relationship with the [Accountability and Implementation Board],” Crawford said. “The better off both boards will be and … the children and the taxpayers of Maryland will be better served.”

It will also be important for MSDE to engage the community to ensure that families know what to expect from the Blueprint and to give local school systems the opportunity to participate in the implementation plan, said Shamoyia Gardiner, executive director of Strong Schools Maryland, a grassroots organization advocating for the Blueprint.

By Elizabeth Shwe

Report: Incarceration Destabilizes Neighborhood Economies, Doesn’t Increase Safety

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A report released by the Maryland Center for Economic Policy suggests decreasing the state’s prison budget will lead to a healthier economy and increased public safety.

The report, released Wednesday, found that Black Marylanders are 4 1/2 times more likely to serve prison sentences than any other racial or ethnic group. Indigenous Maryland residents are twice as likely to be incarcerated than any other racial or ethnic group.

“None of what we’re doing is making any of us safer and it’s most certainly not making those Black communities that are being robbed of human capital ― it’s not making them any safer,” Tara Huffman, director of the criminal and juvenile justice program at the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, said during the Maryland Center for Economic Policy’s third annual policy summit Thursday afternoon.

“It’s destabilizing them even more and you cannot contain destabilization; it will eventually spread.”

Christopher Meyer, research analyst for the Maryland Center for Economic Policy, a liberal think tank, said at the summit that the state currently spends about $1 billion of its budget on incarceration.

“We’re spending all of that money locking up all of those Black folk, and we’re not any safer for it,” Huffman asserted. “We’re not any safer for it.”

Maryland has the highest rate of incarceration for Black men among the 50 states. Despite making up just 31% of the state’s total population, 70% of the prison population is Black.

According to Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spokesman Mark Vernarelli, there were 18,300 sentenced individuals in the custody of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services at the end of October.

The agency also runs Baltimore City’s pre-trial facilities, which, according to Vernarelli, has population changes “very often.” At the end of October, those facilities held about 2,000 people.

According to a February 2015 Justice Policy Institute report, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spent $288,304,000 of its $1 billion budget incarcerating Baltimore City residents, alone.

Huffman said that one-third of the state’s incarcerated population comes from the city. According to a 2019 estimate conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 63% of the city’s population is Black.

“What we know is that taxpayers in the state of Maryland are paying a lot of money from year to year to lock up a whole lot of Black folk,” she said. “Period.”

The report from the Maryland Center for Economic Policy said that there is “scant evidence” that heavy-handed sentencing policy leads to healthy economies and safer communities.

Instead, their report points to cutbacks in housing, healthcare, public transportation and economic opportunities and the criminalization of underground economy jobs, like sex work and the sale of illicit drugs, as factors that lead to increased incarceration and declining public safety.

For example, Marylanders who live in the 50 zip codes with the highest unemployment rates are five times more prone to being incarcerated than those living in other areas of the state.

The Maryland Center for Economic Policy recommends legalizing jobs in the underground economy, abolishing policies in the criminal justice system that criminalize poverty, and implementing comprehensive sentencing reform to decrease the state’s prison population.

Additionally, the findings of the report suggest that investment in public schools, public spaces and adequate drug treatment is the pathway towards a healthy economy and public safety.

“Then thinking about how we ensure that those investments are benefiting … communities,” said Meyers. “Again that comes back to measuring equity as part of the budget-making process [and] making sure that our investments are distributed geographically in an equitable way because we know housing discrimination makes geography really kind of a fulcrum of racial justice and injustice.”

By Hannah Gaskill

QA’s School Board Names Janet Pauls as Acting Superintendent

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Janet Pauls, a retired longtime Queen Anne’s County educator, has been named acting superintendent of Queen Anne’s County Public Schools.

The Queen Anne’s County Board of Education made the announcement during its Oct. 28 work session.

Janet Pauls

Pauls will serve as acting superintendent until Dr. Andrea Kane returns from sick leave.

Pauls began her 43-year career in Queen Anne’s schools as a teacher at Stevensville Middle School in 1977 teaching 5th, 7th, and 8th grade.

Since then she has served as interim assistant superintendent, as well as teacher specialist, supervisor of instruction, principal at two schools, and program director of teacher leadership development.

She retired from QACPS in June 2020.

Pauls will attend her first school board meeting on Nov. 4.