About two dozen Baltimore City high school students from the Algebra Project were arrested on the steps of the State House on Wednesday after a demonstration on Lawyer?s Mall protesting Gov. Martin O?Malley?s reductions to growth in school aid.
Department of General Service police, who guard the buildings, and State Police troopers, who protect the members of the General Assembly, detained and handcuffed the students, but they were released later and not charged with any crime.
“We have a warm day in February, and the kids really got in the spirit of their civics lesson,” General Services Secretary Alvin Collins said after the arrests. Collins said the students had a permit for the demonstration, but that did not include “running up the steps” of the State House. The students carried a mock coffin showing the death of education aid.
There were about 200 to 300 students bused in from Baltimore, where they had conducted another demonstration at school headquarters last week.
“We knew there was a chance” they might get arrested, said “Ace,” a student from the Lake Clifton campus who said he would give no other name. “We weren?t trying to get inside.”
The students carried “Wanted” fliers with a photo of the governor, charging him with “failure to obey court order, cutting more than $300 million to Maryland education, abandonment of Baltimore City Public Schools, lying to students and the murder of Maryland children.”
Dolores Foster, a parent who accompanied the students, said the group had met with O?Malley as mayor, and he had told them that it was Gov. Robert Ehrlich who was not funding city schools. “He?s withholding more money than Gov. Ehrlich,” Foster said. The demonstration “was all the students? idea.”
O?Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese said, “We?ve had two years of historic funding levels for public education,” including an increase of $184 million over last year. “We?re going to try to keep [the] Thornton [education funding plan] sustainable to well in the future.”
Like Ehrlich, O?Malley did not fund the Geographic Cost of Education Index in his first year, a formula that sends more money to city schools, but he is funding it partially in this year?s budget. During November?s special session, at O?Malley?s request, the legislature also reduced the inflation index for Thornton education funding, slowing its rate of growth in future years.
