Before March 13, 2020, then-freshman Ezra Lynch described their life as normal.  Ezra had just finished his second show for Wilde Lake’s theater department. They had a good group of friends. And like everyone else, he went to class Monday through Friday where he sat at a desk, without the need to wear a mask.  But life changed practically overnight.  “The pandemic and online school...

If you thought that marijuana was harmless, think again. According to the CDC, marijuana is not only more potent that it ever was, but it is increasingly being found laced with the deadly opioid, fentanyl.  According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the drug, introduced in the 1960s is used on its own as well as mixed with other substances.  Scott Sheldon, a certified peer recovery...

One day, students walking to school noticed a change nearby. First, a chain link fence. Then, construction equipment. Finally, it all added up when the Section 8 housing in Roslyn Rise was demolished.  Roslyn Rise, an affordable housing development dating back to the 1970s when Columbia was initially being built up, is undergoing the first stages of a complete redesign.  The vision for the...

Effective March 1, universal indoor masking in HCPSS buildings and on school buses was no longer required. This decision, voted on by the Board of Education, came after the CDC's recommendation to move to mask-optional policies in low-risk places like Howard County. Data from HCPSS Covid Dashboard show that Covid cases at Wilde Lake in particular have gone down since December, the highest month...

The blueprints have been drawn, the signatures gathered, and the first bits of the foundation laid. Howard County will open the doors to a new high school in September 2023, an attempt to solve the overcrowding of schools in the area. Dr. Chao Wu, a member of the Howard County Board of Education, says many schools in HCPSS are over 100% students capacity. With high schools around the county...