In Baldacci’s Crosshairs [Editorial]

Ellsworth American, February 21, 2008

(excerpt) Governor 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 under way in Bangor and Augusta, both are putting on a fullcourt 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 Senator Dennis Damon (D-Hancock County), was made 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 their opposition, 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. Gendron’s minions are making false correlations, woefully lacking in concrete figures, to back up the resultant warped conclusions.