Cheryl Ross sends her son Erick to St. Frances Academy on a secretary's salary, hoping to deliver him from a poor East Baltimore neighborhood.
Most of the students at the inner-city Roman Catholic high school go on to college, so Ross says it's worth the couple of thousand dollars a year for tuition and books. But even though she works overtime, she has yet to pay off this year's $233 book bill.
Now Gov. Parris N. Glendening wants to help buy those books.
Glendening has proposed spending $6 million to subsidize textbooks for Maryland's 134,000 nonpublic school students, responding to several years of intense lobbying from Catholic and Jewish schools.
The proposal is a minuscule piece of the state's $19 billion operating budget, less than one-thirtieth of a penny for every dollar. But it is expected to spark one of the most emotional debates in the General Assembly this year.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland is promoting a letter-writing campaign against what it sees as a subsidy for religious instruction. But the debate in the State House is focused less on the question of separating church and state than on the relative needs of nonpublic and public schools.
"People sacrifice a lot of money to pay for tuition and pay for books," said Rabbi Herman Neuberger, president of Ner Israel Rabbinical College. "Any help to relieve the parents is certainly essential. In all fairness, the government should grant it."
The idea is anathema to public education advocates, who argue that it's wrong to give money to schools that generally cater to the well-to-do when public schools have tremendous needs.
"You've got to look at this as not just a $6 million infusion of funds. You have to look at this as a sea change in philosophy," said Del. Michael E. Busch, an Anne Arundel County Democrat. "Does funding private schools drive a further wedge between the haves and the have-nots?"
The have-nots are places such as Southern High School in Baltimore. Despite aggressive textbook purchases throughout the city schools in recent years, Southern High students study with old books in some classes and share books in others.
In drafting class, the students use 20-year-old mechanical drawing textbooks, some with pages torn out. Teacher Bobby Keaton has to make up exercises to teach his seniors recent advances in architecture and engineering.
Principal Patricia Blansfield says she can't afford to buy textbooks and workbooks for her students in every subject.
