After a wintry mix overnight, it’s now closer to 40 degrees than the freezing point outside, but city and county schools are delayed anyway. Go ahead and nurse those Super Bowl hangovers, 3rd grade teachers.
When Gov. Larry Hogan’s budget plan outlined over $35 million in cuts to Baltimore City’s public schools, some parents wasted no time organizing opposition to the cuts. Via the Baltimore Education Coalition, parents, school officials, and other community leaders intend to protest in Annapolis and pressure the governor and state legislators to stop the cuts. The Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland is also opposing the cuts, noting the burden of the cuts will fall disproportionately on their constituency.
Another three men died over the weekend in the ongoing streak of violence in the city. On Saturday night, a man was shot in Northeast’s Frankford neighborhood. On Sunday afternoon, a man and woman were shot in the Elwood Park area of East Baltimore – the woman survived. Later in the afternoon, another man was shot in Northwest’s Woodmere neighborhood. All three homicide victims were shot in the head. Northeast Baltimore has already seen 8 murders this year – as many as all of Washington, DC.
A ticket booth at Camden Yards caught fire during the Super Bowl last night. Baltimore’s Office of Emergency Management was on it.
John Harbaugh swears he didn’t call the Colts about the Patriots’ under-inflated balls, if you still need to talk about Deflategate.
Naloxone, a drug used to stop the effects of a heroin overdose, has doubled in price since June. The price surge means that Baltimore will buy 1,600 less overdose kits than planned in 2015. Heroin overdose deaths are surging in Baltimore and across Maryland (in 2013, 150 died in Baltimore and 464 across MD). In December, Gov. Hogan vowed to declare a state of emergency over the state’s heroin crisis.