ANNAPOLIS, MD - Monday, February 9, 2004

With a palpable sense of betrayal hanging over the air a lively crowd of between 10,000 and 20,000 strong demonstrated on behalf of public education in Annapolis on the cold evening of Monday, February 9th, 2004. The word on everyone’s lips was “Thornton”—the name identifying the education bill that the crowd was demanding that Governor Bob Ehrlich (R) sign into law. Unfortunately, the politically ambitious Ehrlich has a different set of priorities for his constituents.

Ehrlich has tied the Thornton bill with the State legislature’s passage of another bill that brings slot machines to locations around Maryland. The perception that Ehrlich is holding the State legislature (and the public school system) hostage over his slots proposal was on the minds of many in the crowd. For example, Madhu Sidhu, a State and County board member of the PTA who arrived via school bus from Kent County, declares “it is immoral to tie [education] funding with gambling. We need reliable sources for education.”

That sentiment is echoed by Christy D’Camera who claims that when Ehrlich was elected he “promised Thornton. When he got into office he said the only way to fund Thornton is through slots. That’s not fair.”

Paula Harris, who works in PG County, was on hand to declare that “[Governor Ehrlich] needs to reassess his priorities. She also asked “do [we] want a child that can play the slots or one that can read and write?”

Other protesters were angry that Ehrlich has agreed to fund the planned Inter-county Connector (ICC) highway but is holding back on an education bill that is widely considered to be critical. Terry Cummings was among several holding a sign in opposition to the ICC’s cost. (The ICC will cost Maryland an estimated $3 billion. The Thornton bill is calculated to cost $1.3 billion annually. For more information about the ICC: www.iccfacts.com/ )

According to many with first-hand experience, another problem with Maryland’s public school system is very large class sizes. Ashlee Rush, a 14 year-old.student from Frederick Douglass High, objects to the large classroom sizes in her Upper Marlboro (PG County) school. This sentiment is echoed by Andrew Pruski, the union representative at Frederick Douglass. Pruski, who was repeatedly shaking his noisemaker during the protest, claims that in his school they regularly have 42-45 students in a single class. Pruski also said that PG County sent 9 school busses and about 2500 people to offer support for the Thornton initiative at the event.

The size of the crowd surprised many who were there. (The Baltimore Sun, citing a State Department of General Services police estimate, reported 6,000 attended. This seemed to undercount the crowd size by a factor of two or three.) Certainly this protest was one of the largest in the recent history of Annapolis.

Not every person who attended the rally completely favored the message that organizers were sending. Marty Lefstein, the treasurer for the Baltimore City Green Party, objected to the “top-down” nature of the event. Pointing out that State Superintendents played a large role in organizing and speaking at the event, Lefstein believes that true educational reform can only come from a more grassroots movement. He particularly objected to the lack of teachers and other potential opponents of the State’s public school system from the list of speakers.

Speaker after speaker affirmed the idea that Maryland’s Constitution infers the right for the general public to have a fully funded public school system. In their coverage of the protest the Baltimore Sun (The Sun, 2/10/04) failed to report this common theme in the speeches. In addition, the Sun has so far declined to publish a letter to the editor by this author that discusses this concept. However, the Sun has managed to publish a letter (The Sun, 2/10/04) from an enraged reader who strongly objects to the fact that students were allowed to ride school busses to the protest. Apparently, the Sun finds credible the argument that students should not receive first-hand lessons in civics on the public’s dime.

At this writing, Governor Ehrlich is encouraging Republican lawmakers to oppose fully funding the Thornton Plan if slot machines do not come with it (The Sun, February 11, 2004). Ehrlich, whose special “charisma” is regularly reported by the Sun and other local news media, claims that slot machine gambling would generate about $900 million a year in annual revenue. He also says that slots would provide “nearly 70 percent of the money needed to pay for a landmark public schools funding plan” (The Sun, 2/11/2004).

If he had chosen to attend the rally Governor Ehrlich would have seen tens of thousands of people from all over the State willing to stand in the cold in protest of the odds seen for public education with Ehrlich’s big gamble.