Aid for Private Schools Approved in Maryland

By Jessica Portner

Despite vehement protests by teachers' unions, Maryland legislators last week approved a measure that would use public money to buy textbooks for students at all but the state's most expensive private schools.

Following the lead of 17 states that already subsidize private school textbooks, the lawmakers approved a package that would provide $6 million in textbook aid for students attending religious and other private schools. The money was tucked into the state's $19 billion budget bill for fiscal 2001, which won final legislative approval on April 4 and which Gov. Parris N. Glendening is expected to sign later this month.

The textbook program, designed to benefit most of the state's estimated 500 nonpublic schools, would be paid for exclusively from the state's $4.4 billion share of a multistate settlement with...