K-12 schools

Zūm, a Silicon Valley-based company, is taking over half of the Howard County school district’s routes and hopes to transform student transportation in Maryland.

The schools affectionately known as City, Western, Poly and Douglass are next in line for renovations. But the city school system doesn’t have the funds to match what parents and alumni want.

Turning your children over to someone else requires trust. You put your kids on the bus for the first day of kindergarten or watch them drive off for the start of senior year and believe they’ll come home safe and ever-so-slightly better educated. Yet, as school starts next week for most Maryland students, it’s no longer a given that parents have that trust.

Back to school is about more than buying classroom supplies. It’s about getting children back into the mindset of being able to learn (and wake up early).

If the system detects a gun, an alert gets sent to professionals trained to identify guns. Once verified, school officials and police are notified of the threat within seconds.

Baltimore County high school students living within 1.7 miles of their schools may have to walk this year.

With the first day of school right around the corner, here’s a primer on the Baltimore area’s new school leaders, bus changes, COVID policies and more.

Three quarters of Maryland public school students failed the state’s math tests in grades three through eight this spring, an indication of just how much math students didn’t learn during the year of Zoom classes, and how difficult it has been for teachers to catch them up.

Despite policies that limit when students can use their phones, teachers say confiscating them can lead to unnecessary battles — often involving parents — that take even more time away from instruction.

With the first day of school just around the corner, health officials are urging kids and adults to get up to date on their vaccinations, including the latest COVID-19 booster, expected in September.

With Baltimore City schools resuming Aug. 28, city agencies distributed a multitude of resources to families Saturday in hopes of bolstering attendance this fall.

Christopher Bendann faces charges in state court that he sexually abused a student. He was arrested by the FBI early Friday.

I’ve watched with a sense of loss this summer as Hillsmere Elementary School dissolved into a dusty pile of brick-and-concrete rubble, bent-steel framing and broken rebar.

Fifty Baltimore City campers ages 10 to 14 participated in Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport’s summer youth initiative this week, getting a behind-the-scenes look at airport operations, customs and TSA management, as well as a day at the Community College of Baltimore County for a look at its robust aviation program.

Baltimore-area school districts offered bonuses, raised salaries, held dozens of job fairs and tried improving work culture to keep the teachers they have and hire new ones.

In some Baltimore neighborhoods, where schoolhouses may be among the last stable anchors left, the decision to close one can feel like a death knell. And for some parents and advocates, closing lower-enrolled schools while leaving overpopulated ones intact can send a message about a neighborhood’s value.

The conflict over school bus service in Howard County can be traced to one critical decision: pushing back high school start times.

Her earliest memory of assisting her dad on a photo assignment was when Cal Ripken was in the World Series and she was only 8 years old.

I know how to be a good teacher. I worked exceptionally hard to be one. But there’s only so much that can be accomplished in impossible working conditions.

Baltimore City Public Schools must counter misconceptions about how school funding is spent and provide schools and the teachers with what they need, says Joseph Mahach, who teaches Algebra I at Patterson High School.