STREAMLINING WAIVERS: The state school board signaled Tuesday that it willstreamline decisions on granting waivers to local boards of education that don’t want to go along with Gov. Larry Hogan’s executive order pushing the start of school until after Labor Day next year, Liz Bowie and Michael Dresser report for the Sun. After a spirited discussion at its regular monthly meeting about who controls education policy, the board adopted a resolution saying it intends to approve such exceptions “expeditiously” as long as the local boards can provide “reasonable explanations of the educational benefits to students.”
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Maryland’s 24 school districts can apply for a waiver from the state education board to be excluded from a post-Labor Day start, writes Jeremy Bauer-Wolf for the Frederick News-Post. Members of the state school board asked the department of education on Tuesday to draft guidance that will help specify for them and the local school districts how the waivers and the application process would work.
STATE FRACKING REGS: Maryland’s long-awaited fracking regulations would ban drilling in three watersheds in Western Maryland and require extensive safeguards around drilling sites, protections that Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles called “the most stringent” in the country, Josh Hicks of the Post reports.