Week in Review

This week, Patch reported that Maryland is once again gaining national recognition for its public school system, but county school boards faced with tightening budgets are proposing staff and program cuts that could mean fewer teachers and bigger class sizes. Still, superintendents statewide say they’re using strategic spending to prevent the worst effects.

In both Prince George’s, the second largest state system, Superintendent William Hite has indicated there will be fewer teachers and other staff in schools next year, which could affect class size.

Hite has proposed eliminating more than 1,100 school positions, switching from full-day to half-day pre-kindergarten programs throughout the county and replacing evening high school programs with online courses.

On Monday, U.S. District Attorney Rod Rosenstein announced the eight counts charged to former Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson on the steps of the U.S. Courthouse in Greenbelt Tuesday.

According to Rosenstein, the latest indictment replaces the original complaint involving Johnson last November. Johnson’s wife, County Councilwoman Leslie Johnson, was also charged in that complaint, but she was not named as a defendant in this indictment.

Legislators in the Maryland General Assembly are debating a bill that would let students who graduate from Maryland high schools but do not have legal status, pay in-state or in-county tuition. Advocates on both sides of the issue Tuesday descended on Annapolis to testify on the tuition measure before the Senate committee on Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs.

Photographer Sumit Dasgupta snapped some shots of Hyattsville life.

The Hyattsville Elementary PTA talked about what effect a new federal law called the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act might have on the length of the school’s academic day. The law requires that students be given 30 minutes for lunch, with at least 20 of them being actual time to eat.

Principal Jeanne Washburn said with time to get back and forth from class, the whole process would probably take 40 minutes, which cuts into class time.

Early Saturday morning fire fighters from Hyattsville Fire Department responded to a car accident just after at the 3300 block of East West Highway and worked quickly to free an adult male from the Camry and an adult female from the Honda.

The accident occurred just after 12:30 a.m. on the 3300 block of East West Highway near the Mall at Prince George’s.

According to police, a red Camry was traveling westbound on East West Highway at a high rate of speed when it collided with a gray Honda as it was turning left onto Toledo Terrace. The collision resulted in two people being trapped in the two vehicles.

For the second time in the history of the Prince George’s County Fire Department, all off-duty firefighters were called back to work Saturday afternoon to help fight numerous fires spread by high winds across the region.

All county firefighters were asked to be on duty and additional resources were called in from other jurisdictions, Prince George’s Fire Department spokesman Mark Brady said. The only other time all off-duty firefighters were recalled was Sept. 11, 2001, he said.

Firefighters were combating a fire in Laurel that started before 1 p.m. near the aquatic center and had spread several miles to I-95 shortly before 2 p.m., Brady said. The four-alarm fire was burning out of control and was fanned by high winds, he said.

Firefighters extinguished another fire that started earlier in the day in the 1900 block of Trafalgar Court in Fort Washington, Brady said. The blaze began as a brush fire, but spread to nearby structures.

There were also reports of other fires around the county.