Community voices

Federal student loan payments are due to resume Oct. 1, and an additional burden confronts some borrowers, including some Marylanders, because of inequities in student loan programs, says Ian Williams, a consumer protection paralegal at the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service.

As the Greater Baltimore Committee focuses on boosting this region’s economic competitiveness, it must also support programs to end the economic apartheid that now plagues the city’s disadvantaged Black neighborhoods, says Lawrence Brown, an author and research scientist in the Center for Urban Health Equity at Morgan State University.

Fall is here, but we don’t have to let go of what we love about summer quite yet, filmmaker and writer Charles Cohen says.

Maryland must implement data governance practices to protect school systems, which are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks, says James D. Cornelius, a former chief information officer for the Maryland State Department of Education.

Students getting to spend time outdoors enhances learning, and legislation that supports outdoor education should be strengthened, say U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes and Nicole Veltre-Luton, a teacher at Baltimore’s Digital Harbor High School.

An acclaimed musician and composer traveled 8,980 miles aboard six trains through 31 states. He spoke with as many as 80 strangers and turned the conversations into songs, including one about Baltimore.

A community wealth fund would provide a financial lifeline for Baltimore’s working poor, says a union leader for this region’s service workers.

Howard County government funding priorities and questionable school system budget management are to blame for chronic school bus service failures, Hiruy Hadgu, president of Progressive Democrats of Howard County, says.

Improved public health policies and individual actions by loved ones can help prevent suicides, Anthony Woods, Maryland’s secretary of veterans affairs, says.

As Democrats under Gov. Wes Moore have remained on track with an approach to governing that allowed them to reclaim single-party rule in Maryland, Republicans continue to grapple with all that went wrong, says Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics and associate professor of political science at Goucher College.