By Steve Crane | Editor-in-chief
“We don't know the full impact yet, but the new enrollment numbers raise serious concerns. We have to keep the focus on ensuring immigrant students are safe and protected at schools here in our community.” - Donna Christy, president of the Prince George’s County Educator’s Association, on the drop in Hispanic enrollment in state schools during the first year of the Trump administration.
School’s back, but not all the students are, and a prehistoric fish is delivering some modern surprises. Welcome back to the working week.
After seeing steady increases post-pandemic, the most of any demograhic group, the number of Latino students in Maryland public schools fell in the last school year, a drop educators and advocates attribute to the first year of the Trump administration and increased immigration enforcement. And they expect the declines will continue, as Will Hamman reports.
Experts had feared that Atlantic sturgeon — a prehistoric fish that typically reaches lengths of 5 to 8 feet and is believed to live for a century or more — might have disappeared from the Chesapeake Bay and it tributaries, but were surprised to find six adult females last fall in Marshyhope Creek that appeared ready to spawn. It’s just one of the surprises the fish are delivering to biologists, as the Chesapeake Bay Journal’s Karl Blankenship reports.
We also have news on violent crime stats, river cleanups, IndyCars in D.C. and more, and roundup of headlines from last week. As well as an invitation to the Texas Tribune Festival, presented by our States Newsroom partner. It’s all below for your Monday. Enjoy!
Hispanic student enrollment in Maryland public schools fell last year, the first year of the Trump administration, after growing at an average rate of 4.7% a year since pandemic-era lows. (Photo by Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Stock Images)
By Will Hamman
Hispanic enrollment in Maryland public schools began to decline during the last school year after growing at an average rate of 4.7% a year since pandemic-era lows, according to state data finalized earlier this summer.
Maryland's overall enrollment also fell. But Hispanic enrollment declined for the first time in years despite continued robust growth in the state's Hispanic population, a shift that stood out among Maryland’s major racial groups. White and Black student enrollment declined consistently from the 2021-22 school year through last school year, at rates never deviating more than 0.83 points, according to Maryland State Department of Education data released in June.
As classes resume this fall, parents, teachers and other community members reflected on how immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump has cast a shadow over immigrant and Latino families and their public school students. With immigration arrests taking place just outside their doors and immigrant parents being detained on their way to work, fewer Latino students are showing up in class.
Maryland public schools also saw a 4.4% drop in the graduation rate from the 2023-24 to 2024-25 school years among Hispanic students and 5.5% decline for English learners, while the overall rate fell just 1.2%, according to data released in January.
Margi Whitmore, a biologist with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, holds a sturgeon that was netted in the Pamunkey River. (Photo courtesy NOAA Fisheries)
By Karl Blankenship
By Karl Blankenship
Last fall on Marshyhope Creek, which flows into the Nanticoke River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, biologists found something they thought they might never see: six adult female sturgeon that appeared ready to spawn.
“For us to get a female is, like, a monumental thing. But to get six of them in one year ... ,” said Chuck Stence, a fisheries biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Stence and other DNR biologists have been trying since 2013 to prove that the endangered fish spawn in the creek. That’s when a sturgeon, a species biologists thought had long vanished from the waterway, proved it was present: The five-and-a-half foot fish jumped into the boat of two fishermen.
Sturgeon have been providing such surprises for decades — including the mere fact that they still exist. Atlantic sturgeon are the largest fish native to the Chesapeake Bay. Adults are routinely five to six feet long, sometimes larger, and weigh 100-300 pounds. Historically, they reached lengths of 14 feet and weights of 800 pounds. Biologists were surprised when evidence of remnant spawning populations emerged first in the James, then the neighboring York River, and potentially in the Marshyhope/Nanticoke system. The discoveries may not be over.
IN OTHER NEWS
Violent crime saw record drop: Violent crime in the United States fell by an estimated 9.3% in 2025, marking the largest year-to-year decline in the national violent crime rate since the FBI began estimating crime in 1936, according to new national data..
Anacostia cleanup inches ahead: A C-minus is not typically cause for celebration, but the C-minus the Anacostia River will get on a report card to be released Tuesday is the best grade the river's ever been awarded, and advocates are hoping for more progress.
IndyCars take over D.C.: IndyCar took over the streets of the nation’s capital Sunday for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, the last in a series of events coordinated and promoted by President Donald Trump to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States.
Oh, bother: A Maryland tract informally known as the “Hundred Acre Wood,” Winnie-the-Pooh’s fabled forest, has been protected from development with its transfer from NASA to the Fish and Wildlife Service to become part of Patuxent Research Reserve.
MATTERS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
EV charger spread is spotty: Access to electric vehicle charging stations is better, but it's not spread evenly: An analysis shows that 45% of all Maryland ZIP codes don't have a public charging station and a quarter of those with stations have fewer than four ports.
Fentanyl seizures fell: Fentanyl seizures fell by 39% in the first year of Trump's second term after Homeland Security’s shifted its criminal investigations arm to immigration enforcement, leaving few agents to work on drug cases, a new audit says.
Political notes: AFSCME Council 3 President Patrick Moran will be president of the national union, outgoing Sen. Joanne C. Benson and Del. Bonnie Cullison won't stray far from the State House, and Prince George's hosts Fashion Week, in political notes.
MOST-READ STORIES OF THE WEEK
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