Dr. Bill Hazel, CEO of Claude Moore Opportunities, told 杏吧原创 that his organization works to “match people who are looking for meaningful careers in healthcare with the education and training that prepares them for jobs in today’s healthcare environment.”

His nonprofit is among several organizations involved in a four-day training session at George Mason University called “Sources of Strength,” a mental health program already in several school districts in the D.C. region.

“Loudoun County has been very forward-thinking in bringing these programs into the schools,” he said.

Thirty people are taking part in the current session, many of them George Mason University students. The group also includes students from Rappahannock Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, as well as Claude Moore-sponsored AmeriCorps members.

Once participants complete their training and are certified, they will work in school communities with adults and students in the mental health strategies aimed at suicide prevention.

“We found that there’s great interest in being trained. People do recognize issues out there that youth have. They do want to help and they need to learn how to help,” Hazel said.

The training is vital, said Hazel, adding, “Our feeling is that we needed to have people trained to be able to work effectively and safely,” in schools and the community.

The four-day training session is also being done in partnership with the Ryan Bartel Foundation, which was created in memory of Ryan Bartel, a Loudoun County 17-year-old who died by suicide in 2014.

Editor’s note: If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

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Makaylah Phelps is not a judge, but she is a rising high school senior at Montgomery Blair High School.

Seated in a black judge鈥檚 robe in a Montgomery County courtroom, she carried herself with the authority of a veteran jurist on the bench.

She and more than 30 other high school students were taking part in the Montgomery County State鈥檚 Attorney鈥檚 Office Summer Academy.

Saher Kataria, a senior at Northwest High School, was the prosecutor in the mock trial and was confident of a win in a case where the charges included robbery and assault.

Kataria said that during the weeklong summer session, students heard from attorneys, judges and law enforcement officials and she kept in mind the advice of one attorney who told students to stick to a theme in their arguments.

Kataria said when she came up with her closing argument, she kept one thing in mind: 鈥淵ou cannot outrun evidence.鈥�

鈥淭he defense tried to outrun the police, tried to outrun the blame by pushing it on to someone else, but at the end of the day, you cannot outrun evidence,鈥� she explained.

Ela Komuntale, who will be a junior at Winston Churchill High School this fall, was among the members of the jury in the mock trial.

When asked for her verdict on the performances of her peers, she said, 鈥淚 think they did amazing,鈥� adding that the attorneys鈥� closing arguments on both sides were powerful.

鈥淚 felt real drama,鈥� Komuntale said. 鈥淚 felt like they weren鈥檛 just reading off a script. They were actually emulating the witnesses or victims in the situation.鈥�

She added, 鈥淚 feel like this kind of shows how the amendments and all the things we鈥檙e taught 鈥� how they actually work in real life.鈥�

Asked if she felt the weeklong session is helping her understand her rights, Komuntale said 鈥�100%.鈥�

Fellow juror Brianna Abercrombie, a rising junior at Sherwood High School, agreed with the other students that the weeklong session is bringing classroom lessons to life in a new 鈥� and vivid 鈥� way.

鈥淎ll the speakers are amazing,鈥� said Abercrombie, adding that the students heard from a variety of speakers who shed light on the day-to-day operations of the justice system.

鈥淚 loved it. It was so interesting,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t was super informative, absolutely amazing.鈥� When asked if she鈥檇 give it a nine out of 10, Abercrombie said, 鈥淭en out of 10, would recommend.鈥�

After a brief recess, it was time to let the jury deliberate. Within minutes, they made their decision. Phelps, in her role as judge, directed the jury foreman to announce the findings. The verdict was not guilty on both counts.

Phelps turned to the jury and said, 鈥淛ury, we appreciate your service and cooperation in this case today,鈥� and then asked the defense if they wanted to poll the jury. One by one, they confirmed their decision.

State鈥檚 Attorney for Montgomery County John McCarthy said the weeklong sessions are a great way to help students understand the legal system.

鈥淢any things go into deciding what to charge, not to charge, many things go into deciding what the punishment should be for a certain crime,鈥� he said. And getting a close look at what goes into those decisions, he said, is important.

Asked if he saw any future legal eagles among the participants, McCarthy said, 鈥淚 think I should be handing out job offers to about half the people I have here today. They would be great. They鈥檙e very, very smart young kids.鈥�

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“If it wasn’t such a serious affront to the health of Americans and their children, it would be laughable,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association.

While the order itself doesn’t draw a direct line between autism and vaccinations, Benjamin pointed to remarks Trump made Monday, saying the president suggested changes to the vaccine schedule could have a major impact on autism rates.

“All the commentary was around autism, which has not been shown to be caused by vaccines in any kind of way,” Benjamin said.

The executive order calls for splitting up the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three separate shots. It also recommends administering all childhood immunizations at separate appointments whenever possible.

Benjamin said the changes could increase the possibility of missed vaccinations and create additional burdens for parents and their children.

“Every time a parent has to come back, that would be another copay for another visit, that means another taking off from work, that means bringing that kid back,” Benjamin said. “This creates more of a burden for parents, and more discomfort for kids.”

Benjamin said the combined MMR vaccine has been safe and effective.

Another recommendation Benjamin took exception to would shift further away from the universal vaccination for Hepatitis B for most newborns. Instead, the executive order recommends Hepatitis A and B vaccines for certain high-risk groups or through discussions between parents and doctors.

“We discovered that when you give that vaccine early, then those kids don’t get hepatic cancer later on,” Benjamin said, referring to the Hepatitis B vaccine.

“We’re spending our time and effort going backwards into the Dark Ages,” Benjamin said.

The White House announcement comes as measles cases have hit their highest level in 35 years.

Benjamin is not alone in his criticism.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Health Committee, : “I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong,” adding that vaccines don’t cause autism.

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Don Schaffner, professor of food microbiology and chair of the Department of Food Science at Rutgers University, said he and his co-host started the podcast during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People really seem to like it,” he said. “It’s a short-form podcast. Right now, we put it out three times a week.”

Schaffner co-hosts the podcast with Ben Chapman, department head of Agricultural and Human Sciences at North Carolina State University. The latest episode deals with the salmonella outbreak surrounding jalapeno peppers.

“What apparently happened is we had some jalapeno peppers that were contaminated with salmonella at some point along the growing process, or the distribution chain, and some people ate those jalapenos and they got sick,” Schaffner said.

Earlier this summer, the focus was on cyclospora, the parasite that was blamed for causing the spread of an illness that infamously featured what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described as watery and 鈥渆xplosive diarrhea.鈥�

Schaffner said despite concerns over the safety of produce, people can still eat both iceberg lettuce and jalapeno peppers, because the overall food supply is safe.

“Of course if you have information about the product that shows that it is one of the products that has been linked to the outbreak, you shouldn’t consume it,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that all iceberg lettuce or all jalapenos are unsafe. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.”

When asked about whether there seems to be more outbreaks of foodborne illness, Schaffner said that, “the most recent CDC numbers indicate that foodborne disease is not going up, but it’s not really going down either.”

With headlines about the most recent illnesses tied to food contamination, Schaffner said it doesn’t mean the food supply is getting less safe.

The “FDA is always investigating multiple outbreaks and as we learn the cause, it gets some attention,” he said.

Schaffner said if people are looking for guidance on food safety, a good source is the federal government’s website

The site includes information on outbreaks, recalls and how to store and prepare food safely at home.

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To maintain their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, recipients have to “work 20 hours a week or more, or 80 hours a month or more,” said J.D. Douglass-Robinson, the acting director of the Maryland Department of Human Services Office of Benefits Access.

Those activities can include going to work at a paid job, taking part in employment and training programs, volunteering “or any mixture of those three things.”

Nearly 36,000 Marylanders lost their SNAP benefits after the changes took effect Nov. 1.

The links users to 46 employment and training partners, which Douglass-Robinson said will help recipients meet the SNAP requirements and, “sets them up for success once they leave those programs” and look for job placement.

Recipients will be able to take part in 12- to 16-week training programs depending on the types of employment and training they choose.

“They can filter what kind of job fields they want to look for, so things like hospitality, automotive, childcare, health care, etc.,” Douglass-Robinson said.

“They’ll be able to look and see what training providers are in their area, and we’re trying to make it as seamless as possible for customers to enroll in this program and start building a career,” he said.

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William Vance Payne II, 58, of Virginia, was killed in the two-vehicle, Tuesday morning crash in Germantown. Police said the other driver was a 13-year-old boy in a stolen car.

“If the child is 15 or over, then the child could be tried as an adult. But if a child has not reached his 15th birthday yet, then that child can only be tried as an adult if the act that he committed would be punishable by life imprisonment,” criminal defense attorney Steve Vinick, with the law firm Stein Sperling, told 杏吧原创.

In a case involving a 13-year-old, Maryland law would place that child in juvenile court, Vinick said.

“If the person stays in juvenile court, they are getting a huge break. No. 1, they can be detained, but only to the age of 21. In addition, everything that happens in juvenile court is sealed. It will never come up again unless the child, as an adult, commits an offense, and then the juvenile record can be referred to,” he said.

Potential charges in a case like this vary, he said. One possibility is a charge of manslaughter by vehicle gross negligence, “and the other would be manslaughter by criminal negligence.”

“Gross negligence in Maryland is defined as reckless disregard for the safety and life of others,” Vinick said.

“If a person is, for example, driving 100 mph, or deliberately going through red lights, never stopping, swerving around,” he said, that would fall in the category of gross negligent manslaughter and could carry a 10-year prison sentence.

Criminal negligent manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison for first offenders.

Maryland’s juvenile laws came under scrutiny during the 2026 Maryland General Assembly session when the Youth Charging Reform Act was passed and signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore.

The law, which goes into effect Oct. 1, stops the automatic charging of juveniles as adults for certain crimes, instead, starting those cases in juvenile court.

Supporters of the bill argued many of the cases funneled to adult court ended back in juvenile court, and insisted that automatic adult prosecution didn’t make communities safer.

Opponents including the Maryland State’s Attorneys’ Association argued the legislation should have been put on hold for three years, until the Department of Juvenile Services could provide more programming for young offenders.

Vinick said juvenile court serves a much different purpose than adult court.

“The goal is to get this person, this child, this minor rehabilitated and put on the right track, so that when they become an adult and they’re no longer under the jurisdiction of juvenile court, they can live a productive life and not get in trouble or not commit offenses,” he said.

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According to the county law, firearms can’t be carried within 100 yards of public spaces, including parks, schools and houses of worship.

During his weekly briefing with reporters, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said he couldn’t comment on pending litigation but reaffirmed his support for the law.

“I’ll reaffirm my support for any and all measures that we can take to reduce gun violence,” Elrich said. “Our job is to try to protect people. And gun legislation is important in accomplishing that.”

Asked about the U.S. Department of Justice’s legal challenge, Elrich said, “It’s really hard for me to reconcile the Constitution with the blanket, you know, ‘Anybody can have a gun, anywhere, any time’ kind of mentality. Because, you know, what the Constitution talks about is a well-regulated militia.”

Previous legal challenges to the county’s restriction on where firearms can be carried prompted the Montgomery County Council to revise the law.

Opponents of the original version pointed out that just driving through the county with a firearm 鈥� even if the car’s occupants had a license to carry 鈥� would put them in violation of the law.

But another lawsuit, filed by the Silver Spring Jewish Center, argues even with the changes, synagogue members who volunteer to provide security to the center could still violate the law.

Rabbi Menashe Shapiro, an ordained Orthodox rabbi, is a plaintiff in the center’s lawsuit against the county and said the law violates not only the Second Amendment but also their rights to freely exercise their religion.

“We allege that this is a violation of the free exercise clause 鈥� the ability to exercise our religion,” Shapiro said. “We assert that we have a belief, a sincerely held religious belief, to defend our community when necessary.”

Shapiro said the Jewish community had been at greater risk and subject to increased threats in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in Israel.

“Right here, in Montgomery County, Maryland, Jewish communities have experienced a dramatic increase in antisemitic attacks,” he said. “We would like to continue to use a volunteer security team 鈥� of which I am a member 鈥� to defend the community.”

“We’re on site. We know the people. We know the space, and we’re all highly trained,” Shapiro told 杏吧原创.

“Our job is to try to protect people, and gun legislation is important in accomplishing that,” Elrich said in discussing all three of the lawsuits Montgomery County faces.

Asked about the cost of defending against the legal challenges, Elrich said, “Nobody likes spending money unnecessarily, but we’re not going to know whether it’s unnecessary until we play this out in court.”

“I would rather fight and then surrender when I have to surrender if there’s a court decision than to prematurely surrender.”

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And according to the latest data, vaccination rates are ahead of last year’s at this time, said Dr. Kisha Davis, Montgomery County’s health officer.

“I am cautiously optimistic that our numbers of measles vaccinations and all聽school-age vaccines are good; are where they’re supposed to be,” she said Wednesday.

That’s especially important, Davis said, as more measles cases are reported across the country and in Maryland.

By late July, the U.S. had more reported cases of the measles than the 2,289 in 2025, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The measles virus in Maryland is relatively contained. This week, a new case on the Upper Eastern Shore, brought for the year.

“When we see cases in Maryland, and we do every year, we will see a few sporadic cases of measles that usually pop up outside of the county,” Davis said.

“They don’t have anywhere to spread because our vaccination rates are so high, and that’s why we are not seeing the outbreaks that we’re seeing in other states because we’ve maintained such a high vaccination rate.”

Davis spoke during Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich’s weekly briefing and was joined by Dr. Georges Benjamin, the CEO of the American Public Health Association.

“We’ve got good public health officials, a good system in Maryland,” Benjamin said, “and I encourage people to make sure, particularly now as they’re getting ready to plan going back to school, for parents to get all their kids vaccinated.”

Benjamin said that some of the reported measles cases occurred among people who were unvaccinated.

“Being unvaccinated puts you at an extraordinary risk of (contracting) vaccine-preventable diseases,” he said, “and the key word is vaccine-preventable diseases.”

And every case is a “tragedy,” Benjamin said.

“This is a disease you don’t want to get. You get really, really sick when you get measles,” he said.

Measles outbreaks also carry a high economic cost, forcing state and local governments to spend as much as $50,000 to manage each case, Benjamin said.

“That’s money that could be used for education. That’s dollars that can be used for our roads. That’s dollars that can, you know, be used for other things that the county council and the county executive and the citizens of our county聽believe are most important,” he said.

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The bill is being considered in a three day special session. If approved in the Senate, the bill would be placed on the ballot in the Nov. 3 general election.

Proponents and opponents argued Monday during a special session to discuss the bill.

Sen. Steve Hershey, the state Senate’s minority leader, was blunt in his assessment of the Democrats supporting the bill.

“They鈥檙e looking for a way to cheat. They鈥檙e going to ask the voters if they鈥檒l vote in favor of a constitutional amendment so they can redraw the maps to eliminate the only Republican voice we have in the Congress,” Hershey said.

Hershey was referring to Rep. Andy Harris, who holds the House seat in the state鈥檚 1st District and is the lone Republican in Maryland’s congressional delegation.

Democrat Sen. Cheryl Kagan rejected Hershey鈥檚 description, saying, 鈥淚t was Donald Trump who started this whole Pandora鈥檚 Box of a slippery slope down to the bottom.鈥�

“Texas started, followed by other Republican states, so Democrats had to get in the battle,” Kagan said.

“Two wrongs don鈥檛 make a right, and we have been opposed to any type of mid-cycle redistricting whether it鈥檚 Republican states or Democrat states,鈥� Hershey said.

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Gov. Wes Moore has offered a plan that would provide expedited admissions and an $800 credit to attend a University System of Maryland (USM) school for Howard University students who were notified weeks before planning to move in that they were no longer enrolled.

Maryland Higher Education Secretary Elena Quiroz-Livanis said that currently there’s no deadline for applications, but told 杏吧原创, “I would encourage students and families to reach out sooner rather than later.”

“The sooner they contact the Office of Student Financial Assistance, the sooner we can connect them to university officials to make sure that we have a place for them here in Maryland,” Quiroz-Livanis said. “The takeaway here is do not wait, contact us as soon as possible.”

Bowie State University, like Howard, is an HBCU that is encouraging displaced Howard students to apply as well. The school is also part of the University System of Maryland.

“We have opportunities for them to choose and select any major of their choice,” Mitchel Kabia-Williams, Bowie State’s interim vice president for enrollment management and student affairs, told 杏吧原创.

Kabia-Williams said his office is working to make the transition as seamless as possible for students who decide to enroll.

“We do have a supportive staff, supportive faculty and it is a family culture,” he said, adding that student housing is currently waitlisted, though a new facility is expected to open in the spring.

Jaelyn Bull, a rising junior at Bowie State, also encouraged the Howard students to consider what other HBCUs have to offer.

Bull said Bowie State wasn’t her first choice. She said her dream school was Drexel University, and she got in, but the cost remained out of reach even after financial aid offers.

Instead, she enrolled at Bowie State.

“I got exactly what I wanted here at Bowie,” Bull said. “You can get whatever kind of experience you want. It doesn’t only have to be the Howard experience.”

Bull said she understands Howard’s appeal for many students. Her mother is a Howard alum.

Referring to Howard’s reputation as “the Mecca,” Bull said, “I grew up learning about the Mecca and hearing about the Mecca.”

But she said, people don’t seem to realize that “every HBCU has their own unique story and own unique history, and there’s so much of that here at Bowie, that you won’t feel like you are missing out on this Mecca experience.”

“Howard is a great school, but it’s not the end of the line,” Bull said.

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And while their owners are enjoying the annual public safety and community-building block parties, the Alexandria Police Department hopes they will sign up for .

The program, which launched earlier this year, encourages dog owners to take note of what’s going on in their neighborhoods and report suspicious activity or non-emergency issues such as damaged streetlights to city officials.

“We want to kind of continue to expand upon that to ensure that our residents know, No. 1, that they have a say-so in how we police this community,” Alexandria Police Chief Tarrick McGuire told 杏吧原创. “Secondly, we want them to know that they can take the activity of walking a dog” and create a safer community.

People who sign up for the program are discouraged from intervening when they see something suspicious, but are urged to contact the appropriate city agencies.

“We’re absolutely not asking people to be the police, but what we are asking is people to be partners of the police,” McGuire said.

Caitlin Leach, president of the Del Ray Citizens Association, said the program is a natural fit for her neighborhood.

“Del Ray is a really walkable neighborhood with a strong sense of community and is very dog friendly, so we are happy to help raise awareness and have members of the community bring their dogs along,” she said

Dog walkers taking part in Del Rey’s National Night Out event, one of , will walk with McGuire at 6:30 p.m. They’ll meet at Pat Miller Neighborhood Square at 2311 Mount Vernon Ave.

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The move comes after Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich instituted a six-month moratorium in an executive order in June.

Council member Evan Glass, who supported forming a task force to study the issue, said he continues to believe that should have been done at the county level, but said before voting in favor of the moratorium, “We have to get this right, and what we’re doing today is one step towards that.”

Council member Will Jawando, who had pushed for a two-year moratorium, said during the 18-month pause, “We’re not just going to be twiddling our thumbs.”

Jawando said the council would take a look at a number of issues, “noise, water usage, the Potomac River, one that I’ve been pushing really hard on and I’ll mention every time, tax rates.”

The council also approved a zoning text amendment that lays out the definition of what constitutes a data center.

“The fact that we had already data centers existing in Montgomery County, but had no definition of a data center in our code, was a big problem,” council member Dawn Luedtke told her colleagues.

She also said that she felt it was important to acknowledge that there are currently data centers in the county because, “We are not going to do things that shut existing data centers down.”

In approving the moratorium Tuesday, Council President Natali Fani-Gonz谩lez said, “We need more information, especially from the state.”

Fani-Gonz谩lez was referring to a study on the potential impact of data centers being conducted by the Department of the Environment, the Maryland Energy Administration and the University of Maryland School of Business. The Department of Legislative Services will submit the final report to Gov. Wes Moore and the General Assembly by Sept. 1.

The passage of the bill, which goes into effect when signed into law, was called “disappointing” in a statement from Atmosphere CEO Chuck McBride. Atmosphere has been working through the county’s planning process to place a data center in Dickerson in the county’s agricultural reserve. The land was previously the home of a coal-fired power plant that had been decommissioned in 2020.

Chris Baughman, chief platform and sustainability officer for Atmosphere, told 杏吧原创 in light of the council action, “It does not look like we can proceed at this moment.”

“We’re going to take time right now to evaluate it carefully to see what the next steps are,” he added.

Baughman said it’s not possible to say exactly what the next steps might be for Atmosphere.

“These changes do have real consequences when you have delays like this with long lead times for power infrastructure and equipment,” he said.

When mentioning long lead times, he was referring to how long it can take to obtain power transformers, which he said could go between 12 and 36 months to access.

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The efforts are, in part, a response to the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program results, tests that are given each year.

Tenette Smith, chief academic officer for the Maryland State Department of Education, told the state school board Tuesday that the state is working with local school districts to provide them with support systems, “high quality instructional materials” and professional learning and coaching.

One of the programs Smith outlined is the Maryland School Leadership Academy.

“It’s a statewide leadership network that supports all of these three priorities,” Smith said. “This academy aims to develop a pipeline of transformational leaders across five regions.”

So far, 500 school leaders 鈥� principals, assistant principals and those school staffers who want to get into school leadership 鈥� have gone through the training academy. Applications are being taken for the next cohort, Smith said.

Smith said the Maryland State Department of Education is also releasing “our parent guides for student literacy supports, which are now available online.”

The guides are intended to “support parents who are looking for resources and tools to use to help their kiddos.”

Trish Brennan-Gac, executive director of Maryland Reads, a statewide organization that advocates for reading improvements in schools, said, “We are in a reading crisis, and our reading proficiency rates are nowhere where we need them to be.”

But she said that Maryland State Superintendent Carey Wright has been moving the state in the right direction.

“We have a superintendent who is rebuilding our agency. This is a process we are in the middle of 鈥� we are not done rebuilding our systems, and yet we are seeing positive change,” Brennan-Gac said.

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During the new school year, students’ cellphones will have to be put away all day from the start bell to the dismissal bell. They will not be permitted to use them between classes or during lunch periods.

Peter Moran, chief of schools for Montgomery County Public Schools, told members of the county council’s that the policy would be included in the upcoming Student Code of Conduct rule book for the 2026-27 school year.

Moran said the decision to implement the policy this year, ahead of when the state law takes effect next year, was so that students and school officials could “go through the learning process as a community.”

He also cited the feedback shared by principals and teachers that noted since middle schools introduced bell-to-bell phone restrictions, student performance improved.

“You could draw correlation from just the conversations with principals and with teachers that we’ve seen academic achievement in some key areas go up. And when asked what the lever was that was utilized to do that, many people said not allowing cellphones in math classes, not allowing cellphones in English classes,” Moran said.

The chief emphasized that the consequences for violating the policy aren’t being designed to be punitive.

“The philosophy that we’re taking is really that this is a learning opportunity for students. A lot of this is going to be conference-based with students and with parents so that they understand the rationale for the decision, how it’s impacting their learning, why we’re asking them to do this; as opposed to moving to a punitive measure for a student that’s having a difficult time separating from their technology,” he said.

Removing distractions

The school system has also decided to move ahead with the policy because many students have noted how distracting cellphones and tablets can be.

Moran noted, however, that there is some anxiety linked to keeping phones out of the hands of students all day.

“One student said to me, ‘When I have my cellphone in my pocket, I have my mom in my pocket. I have my brothers in my pocket. I have my friends in my pocket. And if I take it out of my pocket, I don’t have access to them,'” Moran said.

Moran said the school system would work with students and parents on the issues surrounding safety and security, and was honest about the potentially “challenging” rollout ahead of the school district.

“It’s going to be more about learning and talking with students and talking with families as we go through this transitional year,” he added.

Looking ahead to the new school year, Moran said feedback from other school systems included the advice that teachers and staff may find themselves having to get used to more noise at lunch, for example.

“Because students are actually talking to one another, as opposed to their faces down in classrooms, you’re going to have more spirited debates, spirited discourse because students actually have their heads up,” Moran said.

Implementing the policy

How and where students would be expected to store their phones is still an open question. In some schools, students place their phones in cubbies in the classroom. Moran said that the reports are it has worked out well.

In other schools, pouches are used. Sometimes, the students keep the locked pouches with them and, in other cases, phones are placed in the secured pouches when entering the building, then retrieved by students at the end of the day.

While the school system works to implement the new policy ahead of the , it is also addressing the tech-related issue of screen time by conducting an audit.

Kimberly Fields, chief technology officer for MCPS, explained at the education committee meeting Monday that the school system would be conducting an audit of screentime for grades K-8.

“We are going to be performing a comprehensive review of it. We’re also going to be taking a look at our content internet filtering,” Fields said.

Council member Kristin Mink asked about content made available for classroom use that purports to be educational, but in reality, seems to聽“mostly be about providing kids with a game.”

Mink said she was concerned that there are times when teachers are trying to provide individual attention to small groups and allow other students to use some of those apps to work on their own.

In those cases, Moran said, “It’s being used as a management tool” rather than an educational program.

“And if it’s being used as a management tool,” Moran said, “then it shouldn’t be utilized at all.”

Fields said the audit would also include an examination of the filters on Chromebooks and other equipment provided to students.

“We know that we do have students that (say) ‘we’re going to challenge this and circumvent the system and find a different way to get through it,'” she said.

Fields said there would also be a review of the suitability and relevance of some of those programs.

In asking about tech security, Council member Shebra Evans said, “Let me ask a question; we haven’t had a cybersecurity attack,” then stopped herself and rapped on the council dias, and said, “Knock on wood!”

That prompted laughter and Evans then continued her question, “Is there a plan that you have in place that, in the event that something happens, you already have something kind of laid out to put into motion?”

Fields answered, “Now that is what keeps you up at night.”

“We do have internal emergency-preparedness plans in the event of something happening,” Fields said, adding that there are periodic checks and tabletop exercises. “This isn’t something where you just say, ‘Hey, we’re done with it and then put it away.'”

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“I would love for there to never be mistakes in student communications, but sometimes it happens,” Tisa Silver Canady, founder and executive director of the Maryland Center for Collegiate Financial Wellness, told 杏吧原创.

Silver Canady said that while distressing, getting a message from a college or university that there’s a problem with tuition or room and board payments “is not something that necessarily means your dream is over,” or that a student will have to go to another school.

“It doesn’t always mean that.”

What it does mean, she said, is that the student and family should contact the financial aid office immediately.

“Critical information is coming from the financial aid office,” Silver Canady said. “The financial aid website 鈥� I know a lot of people are intimidated by it because it’s content heavy 鈥� but if you don’t get into it now and start to develop an understanding and start asking questions about it, then you’ll set yourself up for these sometimes disruptive events like unenrollment.”

Families should make sure they are getting all the emails and communications from the financial aid office and the bursar’s office at their child’s school, she said. That way they can avoid surprises should an updated invoice go to a spam file, for example.

Families should also be prepared to have their financial information easily accessible.

“The number of times that they’re going to need to re-up this process of financial aid is 鈥� at a standard 鈥� going to be twice a year: once per semester and then an additional time if they choose to enroll in special sessions like summer or winter,” Silver Canady said.

Becoming comfortable with understanding how to finance a college education should start in high school, and Silver Canady encouraged families to visit the U.S. Department of Education’s for college.

“One thing that I tell students and families a lot is, there’s a big difference between financial literacy and financial aid literacy,” she said. “And when you are on a campus, that’s when that financial aid literacy has got to start beefing up.”

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