Here was the vice president's 30-second debate mention of school overcrowding: "I'd like to tell you a quick story. I got a letter today [from] Randy Ellis. He has a 15-year-old daughter named Kailey who's in Sarasota High School. Her science class was supposed to be for 24 students. She is the 36th student in that classroom, sent me a picture of her in the classroom. They can't squeeze another desk in for her, so she has to stand during class.

"I want the federal government, consistent with local control and new accountability, to make improvement of our schools the No. 1 priority so Kailey will have a desk and can sit down in a classroom where she can learn."

Gore made one misstep; he used the present tense "has to stand" instead of the past tense "had to stand." The unchallenged fact remains, though, that Kailey, and scores of her classmates, had to stand due to overcrowding, but she no longer has to.

The student's plight became part of the public dialogue when, six hours before the debate, her Republican father, who had been hired to cater food for the Gore campaign while the vice president prepared for the debate in Florida, delivered the above-mentioned letter to a steward on Air Force Two. He also included a Page 1, Sept. 10 story from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that featured a photograph of Kailey Ellis standing in the back of her overcrowded biology class.

Written by education reporter Jill Barton, the article highlighted the drastic measures Sarasota schools were taking in order to deal with a $17 million budgetary shortfall; 100 teachers were laid off, and class sizes have soared. At the high school there are nine more students per classroom this year.

Nine days into the school year Barton went to Sarasota High School to interview students and faculty and got this quote from Ellis' biology teacher, Spike Black: "All day, at least two, three or four kids are without a chair. We could get more chairs but there's no place to put them."

Said Kailey: "In my other biology class, people had to sit on the floor."

That was the article that Gore based his anecdote on. None of the article's facts were challenged by local school officials, who, at the time, were eager to illustrate to readers how damaging the voter-approved budget cuts had been. But when Gore introduced the story nationally, Sarasota officials suddenly cried foul.

The real spinning began the morning after the debate when Sarasota High School principal Daniel Kennedy started making the rounds on local, and then national, radio talk shows insisting Gore's tale was "completely not true." No doubt defensive about having his school singled out on national television for having less-than-adequate learning conditions, Kennedy assured reporters that the episode was just a start-of-the-school-year scheduling glitch, and that Kailey only had to stand for one period because when school administrators discovered the situation it was immediately fixed. (Kailey later told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune she did have a desk the next day, but only because a classmate gave up his, and that he had to go without a desk for another week.) He also misled at least one reporter, insisting the picture taken of Ellis standing in her class was snapped "the first or second day of school." It was actually taken during the third week of school.

Kennedy, who did not watch the debate, theorized incorrectly to reporters that Gore's staff, not Kailey's father, had suggested the VP use the overcrowding anecdote. He then blamed Gore for not checking the facts. The principal also said the space shortage inside Kailey's class was caused by "probably about $100,000 worth of new lab equipment that was waiting to be unpacked."

What's interesting is that once Kennedy came forward with his version of the story, many in the usually skeptical press, embracing the Gore-is-a-liar narrative, accepted the principal's word as the unvarnished, unbiased truth, ignoring the possibility that Kennedy was simply an administrator in damage-control mode.

Instantly, the Boston Globe listed the Sarasota story as one of Gore's debate "gaffes." The Orlando Sentinel asserted, "Gore apparently misspoke Tuesday when he said a Sarasota high school student had to stand during her science class because it was crowded," while the Dallas Morning New reported matter-of-factly that "the story was wrong."

How did the Sentinel and the Morning News know Gore had misspoken and was wrong? Kennedy said so.

The New York Post was unequivocal; Kennedy's version represented "truth." And naturally the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page was certain Gore's anecdote was "fundamentally untrue." How did it know? Because Sarasota High School "is one of the most lavishly supported schools imaginable." And besides, the principal said the story was untrue.

By last Friday editors at the Wall Street Journal's editorial page had lined up Kennedy to write an op-ed piece about the situation. No doubt hoping he'd pen a stinging piece about how the vice president had misled the country with fuzzy facts, the principal instead toned it down a bit and explained that due to a $17 million budget shortfall, Sarasota's high school was struggling with budget cuts. Conspicuously absent was any mention of six-figure, unpacked equipment clogging up classrooms as the reason for the overcrowding.

So to recap, Kailey Ellis attends Sarasota High School, she had to stand in her biology class weeks into the school year and, yes, it was due to extreme overcrowding.

Recent Stories