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South Lake Marketplace & Liberty Sports Park: Building A Sports Destination
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Meet Sheriff John Carr Supporting Military Spouses PGCPS ‘24 Ready Hank Aaron Stamp Unveiled in Bowie
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TABLE OF In This Edition
5. Outlook: The Weather Isn’t the Only Thing Changing In Prince George’s 8. Education: Successes Of The Previous School Year Are Indicators For 2024
10. Profile: The Lead Carr: The Sheriff’s Story And Vision 12. Profile: Support for Military Spouses And Families 15. Profile: Maryland’s Year Of The Veteran: Gov. Moore’s 2024 Proclamation 16. Feature: Ahead Of The Game: NAI Michael Companies Is Setting The Bar For Sports Destination As South Lake Marketplace Plans To Come To Liberty Sports Park 24. Cover Story: Home Is Where The Wine Is 30. Sited: Useful Stories And More That Appear On pgsuite.com
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32. Travel: Gil Griffin Goes To The Beautiful, Peaceful World Of Sri Lanka 38. Health: Medstar Southern Maryland Hospital Center, Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center, UMD Capital Region Medical Center
42. Culture: Legendary Hank Aaron Stamp Unveiled, Negro League Honored At Baysox Stadium
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A Higher Grade Prince George’s Public Schools Have A Promising Year Ahead Dr. Charoscar Coleman, Chief Operating Officer for Prince George’s County Public Schools, gave a presentation of the successes of the previous school year at the July meeting of the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable. Charoscar Coleman: I'll be presenting school year 23-24 highlights on behalf of Superintendent Millard House II. The school system hosted a listen and learn community tour throughout the school district. This included a series of town hall events to gather feedback. Through four engagement events, we reached hundreds of people in person and nearly 20,000 online. The town halls allowed us to hear from students, parents, staff members across the county about the things that are working and the areas that we needed to look at for improvement. As a result, a number of improvement themes emerged. The many points of information gathering have helped us to develop a roadmap that we'll be using as a point-by-point guide for our journey towards a stronger PGCPS. An Audit
The audit yielded several recommendations, and we are taking immediate action to implement solutions that we believe will have a significant impact. For the school year 24-25, upcoming school year, you can expect to see changes aimed at ensuring the safe, efficient, and punctual transportation of our students to and from school is improved. These changes include adjustments to bus assignments and stop locations, as well as the streamlining and standardization of school start and end times. We have also introduced an opt-out option for families who do not require transportation services. Student safety
PGCPS implemented new safety tools for the 2023-24 school year, including a clear backpack policy for students in 9th through 12th grades. The school system also phased in security screening devices in all high schools, selected middle schools, and one pre-K-8 academy. Hosted early in the school year, that forum was a call to action to parents and guardians on the vital role they play in the overall safety of our schools. In case you missed that conversation, it's available on demand via the PGCPS YouTube channel. Our primary work is around preparing students for college and career, and the military, and every walk of life. Scholarship
We're extremely excited about the work of our scholars this past school year. Highlights from the school year that just passed, school year 2324, include results from the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment 8.
Program, or MCAP, for the 22-23 school year showed PGCPS students demonstrated growth overall in both English Language Arts, or ELA as we call it, and mathematics. More than half of the 50 Maryland schools showing the greatest improvement in ELA are in Prince George's County, proof that our students are trending in the right direction. In ELA, students exceeded pre-pandemic performance across all grade levels, with Black and Hispanic students outperforming the state and scoring significantly higher than their peers across all other Maryland school districts. English learners and those from economically disadvantaged families also outscored students with similar backgrounds across Maryland in ELA. In mathematics, PGCPS students saw improvement across all grade levels, with Black students demonstrating math proficiency at a rate similar to their peers across the state. However, Black students from economically disadvantaged families scored higher than their counterparts in the rest of Maryland. The Maryland State Department of Education, or MSDE, report cards and star ratings for the school year 22-23 school year showed 72.4% of Prince George's County public schools received the three highest ratings, an increase from the previous year. Additionally, nearly 75% of PGCPS schools saw gains in academic achievement, including bright spots in elementary and middle school mathematics. 11 PGCPS high schools earned U.S. News rankings in the top 40% nationally, according to a new U.S. News & World Report Best High Schools List. Recognized and Awarded
Public high schools that scored in the U.S. News rankings top 40% nationally gained eligibility to display a U.S. News Award badge. PGCPS has received the EverFi Empowered Seal for the third consecutive year. Awarded to only 10% of U.S. school districts, the seal recognizes exemplary commitment to financial literacy, social-emotional learning, wellness, and career education through EverFi's digital programs. Special education. Originally slated for closure, Pointer Ridge Elementary School in the Bowie community will now play a vital role in addressing the needs of special education learners within the district. Beginning with the 24-25 school year, the school will serve as a site for a regional autism program. Get Technical
Our Career Technical Education, or CTE, programs are continuing to grow. Recent marketing efforts resulted in a more than 400% CTE program application increase from 920 in 2021 to 5,092 in 2023. Crossland High School has transitioned to the Career and Technical Education, or CTE, hub for the southern area of the county, and is offering more than a dozen programs through which students can earn
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PHOTO: THOMAS STONE // COURTESY PGCPS
industry credentials, gain work experience through internships, job shadowing, and onthe-job training. Students in the CTE programs may opt to enter the workforce upon graduating from high school, or they may matriculate to college or university. Finally, students in the Friendly High School Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, or NJROTC, earned both 1st and 3rd place out of more than 1,500 teams on the 2020-21 season national academic exam. This exam is taken by NJROTC units nationwide and recognizes academic achievement among units and individual cadets. Historic school construction.
PGCPS opened the doors to six new state-ofthe-art schools for the 23-24 school year, underlining historic investments in modernizing rapidly aging school buildings and addressing growing enrollment. Known colloquially as the blueprint schools, they include four building replacements, Drew Freeman Middle School in Suitland, Hyattsville Middle School, Kenmore Middle School in Landover, Walker Mill Middle School in PRINCE GEORGE’S SUITE MAGAZINE
Capitol Heights and two new schools, Sonia Sotomayor Middle School at Adelphi and Colin L Powell Academy in Fort Washington. Overall the schools provide capacity for 8,000 students. Green School
PGCPS continues to lead the state in Maryland Green School certification, with four schools earning first-time certification and 47 schools being recertified. This raises the total number of green schools in our district to 150. PGCPS is also leading by example with new school construction projects. By ensuring that new blueprint schools are LEED certified, the district is demonstrating a commitment to energy efficiency and environmental responsibility from the ground up. All six blueprint phase one schools were designed and constructed to be LEED silver equivalent and the district will take further steps by installing solar panels on school buildings. In our ongoing effort to reduce carbon emissions, PGCPS has electric school buses slated to roll out in the 24-25 school year. SUMMER/FALL 2024
AI & Technology
With technology, PGCPS announced a groundbreaking three-year partnership with the AI education project to ensure that all students, teachers, staff and school leaders are equipped to thrive in the age of artificial intelligence. In addition, we have introduced a district-wide AI framework. Finally, a new student information system will be introduced school year 24-25 which will contain a new parent view module to enhance home school communication and information sharing. Other good news.
PGCPS has more than 80 MOUs and community partnerships. We have more than 13,000 approved volunteers and we introduced new hazel health virtual doctor's appointments and teletherapy, that is a free service for our families and our students. PGCPS class of 2024 graduates received 18,366 acceptances to post-secondary programs. The Excellence in Education Foundation awarded $325,000 in scholarships this year alone to 60 class of 2024 graduates. 9.
The Lead Carr
County Sheriff John Carr Sets New Tone By Maria Bellos Fisher
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LLOYD JEREMIAH
Suitland-Clinton son John D. B. Carr wears the top badge at the Prince George’s County Sheriff ’s Office. A separate agency from the Police, the Sheriff ’s Office handles domestic violence, warrants, child support, landlord/tenant issues, prisoner transport, courthouse security and mental health crises. Carr’s served as the top sheriff since December 2022. Early on, Carr wanted to be an attorney, but after earning his bachelor’s degree in criminology at the University of Maryland, he worked at a D.C. civil law firm and quickly realized it wasn’t his path. “I wanted to be more hands-on,” he explained. “I started my career at the Prince George’s Sheriff ’s Office and seeing what we do – impacting lives – I’ve been hooked ever since.” Driven to serve, Carr joined the Sheriff ’s Office in 2002, when cur-
rent-State Senator Michael A. Jackson was running for sheriff. Jackson reminisced, “Two deputies walked through the door that day and I thought ‘One of those two is going to be sheriff of this county.’” Jackson remained engaged with Carr throughout his career. He knew he’d be a star. Carr recounted, “I’m one of few who’ve gone through every unit and every rank in the Sheriff ’s Office before becoming Sheriff.” Carr’s vision for the Sheriff ’s Office is built on four pillars: eradicate domestic violence in Prince George’s County; highlight mental health issues; arrest youth violence and protect seniors. The Sheriff combats domestic violence by connecting people with resources and information. The Office serves about 2,000 orders each month and is working with the Family Justice Center to provide resources. Deputies also connect families to faith community outreach 10.
programs, tell people what to do if they witness violence and teach children about healthy relationships. To address the unique challenges of serving mental health petitions, Carr created a behavioral crisis unit. Mental health crises can be dangerous to deputies as well as sufferers. In 30 years, the only two deputies the Office lost were serving a mental health petition. Carr’s office holds biweekly meetings with mental health nonprofits iMind Behavioral Health, 988 – The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the National Alliance of Mental Illness as well as local hospitals, to better serve the mental health community. Carr laments that Maryland lacks a long-term mental health facility. “That’s huge,” he said. His office also partners with mental health court judges to solve problems. “The more partnerships we have, the better off we are,” he said. Sheriff Carr also recognizes the struggles his deputies face. “The behavioral unit is tough. It focuses on people with court orders to get back to the hospital. We develop relations with the individual and the family. “We provide top notch training. We pay attention to deputies’ wellbeing. We take care of them mentally and physically. They have mental health care and training. They need a good work/life balance. They’re human too. Whatever happens, they go through their own personal issues in life. We have a responsibility in the agency to take care of them.” Carr explained. Sheriff Carr’s proactive nature doesn’t end at mental health. The Sheriff ’s office teaches classes at nine middle schools, hoping to expand the program county-wide. The classes cover life issues, helping kids to find personal rules to follow through middle school, high school and possibly the deputy cadet program. Deputies cover employment, STEM, domestic violence, social issues, and self-esteem and character development. For senior citizens, the Sheriff ’s Office assists fraud victims. Typical swindles start with a call saying the senior’s loved one has a warrant or is incarcerated and the caller requests money or sometimes a gift card. Seniors can also get phones from the Sheriff ’s Office to help them to age gracefully in Prince George’s County. Carr’s “think big” strategies come from his parents. His mother, Joyce Turner, told PGS, “He’s got a strong will. If he believes in something he’ll fight for it; stand up for it. He won’t shy away. He puts himself out there.“ Given the strides he’s making, Prince George’s County is fortunate that he’s put himself out there for us.
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berty Sports Park And South Lake Marketplace Set The Bar By Maria Bellos Fisher PHOTOGRAPHY BY LLOYD JEREMIAH
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Home IsWher
Story And Photography By Maria Bellos Fisher
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Destination Sri Lanka Story And Photography By Gil Griffin
GIL GRIFFIN // PRINCE GEORGE’S SUITE MAGAZINE & MEDIA
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