Immigration has always been a core strength of America, meaning that assimilation has always been a major challenge. And it’s one past waves of immigrants had to meet with little outside assistance.
Still, it’s a good idea — for immigrants, for their children and grandchildren, and for the communities in which they live — for governments to mount outreach efforts for such groups. Our story on Wednesday reviewed successful or promising efforts by the county and the City of Annapolis for Hispanics, an ethnic group now accounting for about 7.5 percent of the county’s population.
Both city and county police now have Spanish-speaking officers. The county police worked with the Annapolis-based Center of Help outreach group to set up a pilot program, Bridging the Gap, in which 25 officers had a two-week immersion course on Hispanic culture and conversation. The county has a director of immigration and multicultural affairs, Maria Casasco, and County Executive Steve Schuh’s Anne Arundel United effort is premised on celebrating diversity and building understanding.
City police outreach efforts include a youth leadership and mentoring program carried out through the county public schools and bilingual facilitators who work with students and families.
All this is a heartening change from a few decades back, when, as Casasco observed, there were no city or county programs aimed at immigrants. And the recent charging of five people in the apparently gang-related death of a 21-year-old Hispanic woman from Annapolis only underlines the importance of building trust and keeping lines of communication open. Outreach will pay dividends and make for a stronger community.
Schedule squeeze
The arbitrary mandate that state schools not start classes until after Labor Day and still finish up not later than June 15 was one of our least favorite decisions by Gov. Larry Hogan. And the problems the county school system now has trying to engineer its 2018-19 schedule don’t improve our opinion of it.
The mandate took effect this school year, and some bits of luck that made it easier to adjust this time around have now evaporated. During the 2018-19 school year, Yom Kippur will fall on a Wednesday and not a Saturday, June 15 is on a Saturday and schools will have to be closed for the general election on Nov. 6, 2018.
To make up for this, the school system’s calendar committee is proposing to drop one day during which schools would have been closed for parent-teacher conferences and also to keep classes in session for one day during October’s Maryland State Education Association convention. In addition, inclement weather days would be dropped from a scanty three to an even scantier two.
Whatever the school officials decide on will cause lots of grumbling. You can chalk it up to the bad aftermath of a bad state decision.
