It's 11 O'Clock, Do You Know Where Your Superintendent Is?

About a month ago, Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, said the time has come to cut some of the state's 152 school superintendents.

In a Kennebec Journal article by Keith Edwards, Martin is quoted as saying, "I've seen many superintendents here all three weeks of these meetings, That tells me there are too many superintendents in this state. This documents it."

An editorial in the Mount Desert Islander and Ellsworth American takes a different view of the committee in which Martin is a member.

“The Appropriations Committee, which shouldn’t even be dealing with education matters, is scurrying around trying to assemble a proposal calling for no more than 80 school districts — each with at least 2,500 students unless an exception is made — and, presumably, a like number of superintendents. All of this is going to happen in a period of three or four months, with little or no public involvement. Meanwhile, superintendents, teachers and school boards remain on edge with little idea what the future holds in store for them or their school systems.

Citizens must not remain silent and simply hope for the best. Concerned Maine voters should immediately contact their legislators and ask them what they intend to do when the school plan comes up for a vote, as it surely will. If you believe, as we do, that this state grab for power is a bad and dangerous idea, tell them so. You, not the state bureaucrats, are the people who are in the best position to make decisions about the most appropriate and cost-effective means of providing educational services to our children.

Your voices need to be heard in Augusta.”

And once again the problem is that your voices are not being heard. I can’t help but note the similarities in the editorial complaint from our own commentary here at votersofmsad46 when we were talking about the Dexter consolidation effort.

Concern about what is likely to be decided “with little or no public involvement” is apparently more real to superintendents and school boards when their own positions are threatened with possible extinction.

Too bad the same concerns don’t exist for the sake of the public’s involvement in other areas of the schools' operation.