Tuesday was a day I will not forget anytime soon.
There was nothing remarkable about the day until I pulled into Ocean City Elementary School with my son at 9:30 a.m. after appointments he had earlier that morning.
What appeared initially to be a fire alarm drill was something altogether different. I was immediately stopped and advised there had been a bomb threat. At that point, I wasn’t sure if he should join his classmates or just stay with me while everything unfolded.
That’s when we sat down on the curb and observed the school faculty adeptly run through its procedures. With kids huddling in line to keep themselves warm, the teachers and other staff members tended to them, while school administrators went down a protocol checklist. It was a surreal experience listening to the respective teachers communicate with each other while essentially calling a roll of sorts of individuals accounted for.
At one point, after this roll call took place, it was decided the students and teachers needed to be relocated away farther from the school to a field on the other side of the playgrounds. It was done so in an orderly fashion and the teachers, who surely had to be fueled with uncertainty and inevitable concerns at this time, deserve tremendous credit for keeping their students calm and focused. It’s worth pointing out it wasn’t the coldest day of the week, but it was chilly at this time of day and many of the teachers and students did not have jackets as they were rushed outside immediately when the bomb threat was received.
What made the day worse was just after returning to the school from the fire house another evacuation was ordered because of smoke being in the building from an unknown source, most likely an HVAC malfunction. Again back to the same field went the student body and again not everyone had their coats because of the nature of the emergency.
It was a quite a sight to behold. When teachers are forced to stop being educators and instead take on the role of primary protectors of our children in situations of unknown severity, emotions run high. While I watched those teachers huddle their cold kids together with blankets while trying to maintain their composure in a professional manner, I couldn’t help but feel resentment building for the coward who put everyone through the ordeal. I’m sure I wasn’t alone with those sentiments.
A couple hours after the troubling school day came to an end, Principal Dawn Rogers reached out to her students, teachers, community and first responders with a heartfelt message of appreciation for the support and acknowledging the difficulties of the two evacuations.
“I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart on how we pulled together today … today was a different day for sure but we all pulled together to take care of the most precious gift of all — our children. Thank you,” Rogers said.
That message was on point and received well by parents.
Partnering to run for office as a team worked four years ago for Ocean City Council members Doug Cymek, Dennis Dare and Mary Knight. This year they are doing it again with the only difference being they have added newcomer Tony DeLuca to the team.
A cool 10 months before the November election, the incumbents officially filed Tuesday, a week after the announcement of the hire of a new city manager, who will start on the job next month. They seemed to indicate they wanted to file this week to make their intentions clear early on.
The council team seems to be running on the status quo, as in everything is peachy currently and these four — who will almost assuredly be joined by Mayor Rick Meehan — want to see the forward progress continue.
Every election season in Ocean City brings a couple surprises so the real story moving ahead is who will sign up to challenge this formidable team in the months ahead.
Speaking of elections, Salisbury Councilman Jim Ireton, a Democrat, all but confirmed his intention this week to challenge Congressman Andy Harris, a Republican, this year.
In an interview, Ireton sounded very much like a candidate when he offered numerous critical comments of Harris. He also sounded like he was preparing for what he views would be a nasty campaign should he decide to make his intentions official and then get through the primary.
“Fifty bucks right now, I’ll run a commercial that talks about his ‘no’ votes and he’ll run a commercial about my personal life. Every time you hear the word ‘liberal’, every time you hear the word ‘radical’, every time you hear the word ‘gay’. And every time you hear the word ‘police’, it’s because Mr. Harris doesn’t want you to know that he voted against the citizens of Crisfield with his vote for hurricane relief (after Hurricane Sandy). He voted against the farm act, the fact that he voted to take women’s health decisions away from them repeatedly. … 175,000 people in the counties of the 1st district now have health insurance that didn’t have it before. That’s the type of race that I will run, and the type of race that Mr. Harris will run will … be nasty and below the belt and beneath what the citizens of this district and this country deserve when people are running for the United States House of Representatives.”