There are about 50 public charter schools in Maryland, educating roughly 24,000 students. 30 of these schools, over half of the total number, are in Baltimore.

For some time, there has been a heated debate about funding formulas for public charter schools. Charter schools are independently operated under a contract, or charter, with individual public school systems.

Last May, a group of charter schools said they were in danger of closing because some of these systems withheld funding.

Will McKenna, the former co-chair of the Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools, recently worked with the state education officials, including State Schools Superintendent Carey Wright, to create a better deal for the state's charter schools. He joins Midday to discuss those negotiations and what they mean for the future.

McKenna is founder and the executive director of Afya Baltimore, which operates two charter schools in Baltimore.

Dr. Hahrie Han is a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and the inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute.

Her research focuses on civic and political participation, organizing to social change.

Last week, she was named to the 2025 class of MacArthur Foundation Fellows. She and 21 others were each awarded an $800,000, no-strings-attached grant, often called 'genius grants.'

The executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council reacts to Monday's release by Hamas of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza, amid a fragile ceasefire agreement and uncertainty about an Israel-Palestine peace.

Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom now for another of her weekly reviews of Baltimore regional theater. Today, she spotlights Hamlet/Black Parade, now on stage at The Mercury Theater, an artist-run performance space in the heart of Baltimore's Station North Arts District.

Produced by the creative team of Motte & Bailey and adapted and directed by Hannah Fogler, Hamlet/Black Parade is a unique musical interpretation / mash-up of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and alt-rock band My Chemical Romance's classic "The Black Parade" album.

Carole King was a 19-year-old songwriter from Brooklyn when she wrote "Take Good Care of My Baby" for the pop singer Bobby Vee. In 1961, the song would become one of nineteen Top-Ten hits Carole King would go on to write for other artists over four decades.

Ten years after that hit, King recorded an iconic album as a performer that garnered multiple hits for herself. Tapestry was an international sensation. It won four Grammy awards, and established Carole King as a force in pop music whose impact and influence are boundless.

Welcome to Midday. Tom's guest for the hour is journalist and author, Jane Eisner, who has written a scrupulously detailed and illuminating new biography of one of most influential American singer-songwriters of the 20th century.

The book is called Carole King: She Made the Earth Move.

Recent reporting shed light on a forgotten graveyard in Prince George’s County, part of a dark chapter in Maryland history.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the cemetery was the final resting place for young people held at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children—a detention center for Black youth.

The property is now home to a number of state buildings, including the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center.

State Sen. Will Smith, a Democrat from Montgomery County, was part of a delegation of lawmakers who visited the site recently. He joins Midday to talk about what he saw.

A proposal by the Trump administration to severely limit the number of legal refugees, people who have been vetted and who have followed the rules to enter the country properly, would be a huge setback for thousands of people hoping to escape difficult conditions in their home countries.

Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have continued their crackdowns on immigrants living in the United States without legal status.

For insights into the latest immigration news Midday is joined by Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the President & CEO of Global Refuge, a refugee resettlement organization based here in Baltimore.

Each year, Baltimore’s 14 largest nonprofit institutions, places like Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical Center, contribute an annual payment to the city referred to as PILOTs, or Payment in Lieu of Taxes.

Because nonprofit entities are not subject to taxes, these nonprofits make voluntary payments which have, for the last several decades, been negotiated with the city every 10 years.

Last week, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott announced that the city had negotiated a new PILOT agreement for five years that will gradually increase the annual payments to $12 million a year by the end of the agreement.

But some say the increase is still not enough considering the huge wealth these institutions steward. And questions have been raised by critics who say this new agreement was not reached transparently.

Baltimore City Councilwoman Phylicia Porter Midday to discuss the agreement and what it means for the city. Porter sought to create a PILOT taskforce to study what an agreement could look like. The Mayor signed a deal before the bill creating the task force was put to the council for a vote.

Katie Pumphrey became the first person to complete the 24-mile swim from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in 2024. She previously swum around the Island of Manhattan and three times across the English Channel.

Her love of the open water inspires her visual artistry. A new exhibit at the Creative Alliance through October 11 is called “Swimming Pool."