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FEBRUARY 6, 2015
SERVING NORTHERN WORCESTER COUNTY
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BAYSIDE CHAMPS Five Stephen Decatur indoor track athletes earn individual conference titles – Page 35
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Bdwk. task force set to start public hearings Monday Several sessions planned to address performer issues
ZACK HOOPES/OCEAN CITY TODAY
The new Ocean City Beach Patrol facility on Talbot Street is still on schedule for completion by the start of summer. The OCBP will move into the new building during the work season, and the old building on Dorchester Street will come down in the fall.
Hall buildings to be razed soon By Zack Hoopes Staff Writer (Feb. 6, 2015) Downtown Ocean City’s landscape will continue in a state of flux this spring, as construction on the new Beach Patrol headquarters continues while demolition is soon to start just a block away. The city is slated to issue a request for bids next week for the demolition of several buildings along the north side of Somerset Street, inside the Ocean City Development Corporation’s “model block” area. This will include the former Hall’s Pioneer Hotel building on the northwest corner of Somerset Street and Baltimore Avenue, as well as the residential structures stretching west along the north side of Somerset.
The city bought the properties from the Hall family last year. Meanwhile, construction of the new Ocean City Beach Patrol headquarters on the southeast corner of Philadelphia Avenue and Talbot Street continues to be on target for a Memorial Day completion date, according to City Engineer Terry McGean. Once complete, the new building will allow the OCBP to clear out its dilapidated headquarters inside the model block, allowing the property to be fully cleared for a future OCDC-sponsored redevelopment initiative. In the mean time, the open lots will be used as temSee BEACH Page 4
By Zack Hoopes Staff Writer (Feb. 6, 2015) If you’ve ever wanted to speak your piece about what’s on the Boardwalk, this is your formal invitation to do it. The city’s newly-formed task force for Boardwalk regulatory issues will be holding two public hearings on Monday, Feb. 9 at 6 p.m. and Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 1 p.m. to receive open comments on how to address competing public interests on the boards. An organizational meeting for the task force was to be held last night. “We’ll get a feel for each others’ ideas and have some preliminary debate about the issue,” task force chair Greg Shockley said. “Then we’ll have the two hearings, and then there’ll be at least one meeting after that where we nail down some recommendations.” Besides Shockley, owner of Shenanigan’s Restaurant and current chair of the Maryland Tourism Commission, the task force will include Lee Gerachis, owner of Malibu’s Surf Shop; Frank Knight, of the Boardwalk Development Committee; Bob Rothermel, of the Ocean City Downtown Association; and Mark Chase, a long-time street performer. The city council voted last month to create the task force on the recommendation of legal advisors from Venable LLP, whom the city has hired See TASK Page 3
Digital conversion edges closer in Worcester Laptops selected for project to have in-classroom tech for every student in county
By Brian Gilliland Staff Writer (Feb. 6, 2015) Worcester County Schools have selected the devices ninth-grade students will be issued at the start of the 2015-16 school year, while the Worcester County Education Foundation continues to raise the funds to pay for the technology. A focus group of students from
three high schools, including students from special education and English for speakers of other languages, have selected laptops rather than chromebooks or tablets to be distributed as part of the schools’ digital conversion initiative. The idea of the Digital conversion initiative, which will begin in September, is to make computer technology available to all students at a 1:1 ratio. “As we went through the process, we realized the students would be the best engineers, so we set a protocol where they would test every device
for every student,” said Diane Stultz, coordinator of digital learning and instruction for Worcester Schools. The students performed word processing, drawing, presentation and online program application tests, as well as tasks associated with the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers testing, which will also use digital devices. Laptops ran away with the race, with 57 percent of students preferring them to chromebooks with 23 percent and the 20 percent who liked tablets best.
From the results, Stultz found the evaluating students often chose the devices with which they were the most familiar. “They would say the laptops were good because that’s what they were used to or a tablet because that’s what they had at home,” she said. The selection, ordering and distribution schedule already provided was, Stultz admitted, optimistic, but the process is ongoing and the target distribution date is still firmly within her sights. Later this month, Stultz See BUSINESSES Page 4