Maryland Schools Ban Animal Exploitation and Embrace Humane Education

January 2002

A concerned member sent PETA a flier distributed in her community by one of the few remaining donkey ball outfits that listed all the cities in which schools had recently used their services. We located the school districts that include each of the cities and wrote each superintendent a letter explaining the inherent cruelty of donkey basketball and why subjecting animals to ridicule and degradation is such a negative message to send to children of all ages.

Soon after, Washington County Public School officials in Maryland let us know that they would discuss the issue at their upcoming school board meeting and would like to “try out” some of PETA’s humane education materials in one of their schools.

We received a follow-up letter from the school system letting us know that they had set a policy against not only donkey basketball, but also virtually any event that exploits animals. They told us that the humane education materials that we had sent were such a huge success that they planned to implement them in every single school in the county.