[Local-Maine-Schools] In Baldacci’s crosshairs: Ellsworth American & Mount Desert Islander editorial

[Brian Hubbell]

Editorial
Mount Desert Islander <http://mdislander.com/site/> and Ellsworth
American<http://www.ellsworthmaine.com/site/>
Thursday, February 21, 2008

*In Baldacci's crosshairs*

Gov. John Baldacci and Maine Education Commissioner Susan Gendron are going
to be very busy while schools are closed for vacation this week.

As high school basketball tournaments are underway in Bangor and Augusta,
both officials are making a full-court press in the halls of power to do
everything they can to kill the Damon Amendment, a provision passed by the
Senate last week allowing school unions as a form of organization under the
school redistricting law. That measure, submitted by state Sen. Dennis
Damon, a Hancock County Democrat, was created at the urging of Mount Desert
Island educators, who feel districts across the state can benefit from
having an option to create the type of organization Union 98 enjoys on the
island.

In opposing the amendment, Augusta's two clueless riders of the coming
educational apocalypse will be strong-arming lawmakers on both sides of the
aisle who have the audacity to believe cost savings can be achieved without
stealing control of local schools from the people who pay those bills and
who know and understand them best.

Unable to come up with a valid, logical reason to be against school unions,
state officials instead are attempting to bury amendment supporters under a
flood of flawed statistics erroneously claiming that unions have higher
costs. Ms. Gendron's minions are making false correlations, woefully lacking
in concrete figures, to back up the resultant warped conclusions.

Using the phony numbers, they will spend this week attempting to attach an
astonishing and deliberately inflated fiscal note to the amendment before it
is voted on in the House. This is all part of an orchestrated effort to give
the amendment a speedy political death at the hands of lawmakers reeling
from nearly a year of the administration's unpredicted budget shortfalls and
faulty revenue projections.

In a communication to her constituents this week, Maine House Majority
Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat and a member of the governor's own party,
went so far as to say that state officials are not being truthful.

"I believe the Damon Amendment requires real administrative consolidation
without giving up local control or threatening to close small schools
without a community's consent," wrote Rep. Pingree. "I think it accomplishes
what the governor and commissioner stated last year as their goals – to
increase efficiency and reduce administration. But, as we gear up for a
fight to approve LD 1932 with the Damon Amendment in the House, we are faced
by a barrage of misinformation from the Department of Education and heavy
lobbying by the governor's office."

Sadly, this debate has shown a major split between urban centers such as
Bangor and Portland, with sizeable school districts that will be largely
unaffected by consolidation, and rural areas whose very way of life sits
squarely in Gov. Baldacci's crosshairs. Urban lawmakers who so casually
dismiss rural education concerns may rue the day they showed little interest
when they need help from rural legislators to forestall the governor's
misguided efforts, when the focus shifts to them. Most distressing is the
apparent disinterest of some Democrats who have not hesitated to rail
against the state's loss of control over education through the mandated
federal "No Child Left Behind" regulations. They bemoan the feds telling the
state what to do, but are quite willing to have officials in Augusta ram a
one-size-fits-all school redistricting plan down the throats of hundreds of
Maine communities.

We can only hope that members of the Maine House will see Gov. Baldacci's
and Ms. Gendron's power-grabbing machinations for what they really are. This
isn't about saving money. It is a full frontal assault on that most
cherished of Maine political institutions, local control.
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