Maryland OKs School Public-Service Plan

Maryland on Wednesday became the first state in the nation to require public school students to perform community service to graduate.

The plan passed by the State Board of Education requires students to complete either 75 hours of community service or a program designed by local school officials and approved by the state superintendent of schools.

The changes take effect for incoming ninth-grade students in the 1993-1994 school year.

The community-service requirement will help teach students the values of citizenship and show that they are contributing members of society, said Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, president of the Maryland Student Service Alliance, which helped develop the plan. The alliance, a program of the state Department of Education, oversees school community service programs.

“It’s a way to show they can make a difference,” she said.

Opponents of the community requirement argued that community service and volunteerism should be encouraged rather than imposed.

“We don’t feel it is appropriate to coerce paid labor just because they’re children,” said Jane R. Stern, president of the Maryland State Teachers Assn., state affiliate of the National Education Assn.

“Once you make it a requirement, you lose the meaning of volunteering; it’s just doing time,” she said.

School officials in Atlanta, Detroit and Springfield, Mass., already require their students to perform community service.

Starla Jewell-Kelly, executive director of the National Community Education Assn. in Arlington, Va., said mandatory community service is needed to help rebuild cities.

“Communities are breaking down. We don’t have that sense of each other; you can see that in the breakdown of inner cities,” she said.