Today is the first day of the ninety day session of the Maryland General Assembly. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t understand how any of that worked (for years!) and didn’t follow it whatsoever. I’m certainly no expert now but I do follow the session much more closely than I used to. If you’ve seen some of the outrageous laws coming from other states, you can’t help but realize that they have come out of state legislatures.
If you don’t want to see that in Maryland, pay attention.
And it isn’t just a matter of keeping an eye out for what you don’t want. Check and see if issues that you care about will be discussed/addressed this session. Pamela Wood of the Baltimore Banner does an excellent job of covering state government during these highly charged ninety days each year. Bryan Sears covers the General Assembly for Maryland Matters, and Jeff Salkin presents state news weekly on MPT’s State Circle
In the extreme weather department, yesterday’s early school closing brought out some of the same arguments we see every time that weather and schools are in the same sentence. Invariably someone will point out that “we never closed for rain when was a kid…” In most cases, this is true. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should do exactly what was done when we were children. For instance, in my childhood the school nurse frequently coated boo-boos with Mercurichrome.
Merbromin is found in some antiseptics. A common brand name is Mercurochrome, which contains mercury. Compounds like this that contain mercury have not been legally sold in the United States since 1998. Medlineplus.gov
Things don’t stay the same. Weather today is different than it was when you were a kid. Some folks don’t want to acknowledge that because that would give validity to the concept of climate change, which they also don’t want to acknowledge. I saw someone just about turn themselves into a pretzel yesterday trying to prove that schools close more often these days in response to weather events solely because our society is more litigious.
It’s not quite that simple.
Finally, today Dr. Michael Martirano’s last day as Superintendent of the Howard County School System. Hopefully it will be the beginning of a happy and rewarding time for him in retirement. I also hope that we are able to find a new superintendent who is qualified, a good listener, and is willing to work with us. If I were applying for Superintendent jobs right now, I might run from Howard County. Sure, we have the usual challenges that many school systems have, but the big repellent is the contentious parents who are trying to force their views into every board meeting, school curriculum, and even school libraries.
We tend to think highly of ourselves in Howard County and that anyone would be lucky to have our Superintendent job. We do have great schools and teachers, wonderful students and families. But those loud and destructive voices have done a good bit of damage over the last few years. Will they act as a deterrent for the kind of applicants we desperately need to be considering?
I sure hope not.
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