LePage’s Shove Off Style

Paul LePage gave us a snapshot of how he would govern and what Maine could look like under his watch at the Waterville Rotary yesterday afternoon.

According to a Morning Sentinel report LePage told his fellow Rotarians that Maine taxpayer has been "ignored and vilified" for years. Check off the “angry and divisive” box.

On welfare he touted his own experience to press for a tiered program with one happy ending being: "At the end of five years, if you still need welfare, I will personally buy a ticket to Massachusetts so they can start over." There were no shreds of understanding of the circumstances of who uses the system, what exceptions are compassionately appropriate, nor where the tier of jobs needed on the other end of his plan will come from in this extremely challenging economy. Check off the “ignore and vilify the welfare bums" box.

Regarding education LePage reiterated his support of charter schools and vouchers while recognizing that, "A lot of people in the public education system say, 'Oh, charter schools are just going to leave us the worst students.' That might be true. But at the same token, you know what you are dealing with, so fix it.” Check off the “starve and kick public schools” box.

Perhaps the most eye opening real fact to come from LePage involved his own company’s employee health care insurance participation rates:

"In 1996, 71 percent of Marden's employees took health insurance. Today, we're down to 29 percent. Why? Because the other 25 percent that the employee is responsible for is unaffordable."

This is revealing because Paul LePage became general manager of Marden's precisely in 1996. Under his leadership, company health care insurance coverage of employees fell by a whooping 42%! This smacks of a total failure to address a significant problem and at the very worst a possible purposeful plan to cut business costs on the back of employees. Marden’s obviously benefited tremendously by not needing to pay the 75% to cover the hundreds of employees that could not afford the plan according to LePage. If anything this prompts more questions about Paul LePage’s style of fiscal management. Why didn’t he create a tiered system like his welfare plan to address the problem of the 25% burden? Does Marden’s pay a living wage to begin with that allows individuals to afford health insurance? Did Paul LePage engage in the same type of shenanigans as Wal-Mart when it came to employees and health care?

Paul LePage would be the worst possible kind of governor. He believes that his own mythical story can be simply replicated by anyone regardless of circumstances and economic realities. He offers no real solutions to systemic problems or addressing long term economic concerns. He seems to view Maine as primarily a few salvage boxcars of welfare fraud and education waste that he can mark down and shove out the door to save a few bucks without consequences. For Paul LePage, it will be business as usual.

Paul LePage "In Writing"

Paul LePage wants to only answer reporters in writing either because he is a gaffe machine extraordinaire or a controlling politician who despises free press journalism. Test number one is in today's Kennebec Journal piece on education reform initiatives. Mr. LePage shows us just how responsive he is:

Republican candidate Paul LePage, the only candidate who wouldn't offer an interview for this article, said in a statement released by his campaign that education policy is best left up to local school boards.

"The Race to the Top funding is not about educating kids, it is about the federal government running the education system," the statement said. "We need to be careful about accepting federal money with strings attached."

So, no interview but he did write back with a no answer statement to sweeten up his tea party. The non-answer is pretty much reality: Paul LePage has no answer or vision for education in Maine. Here is the sum total on the issue directly from his website:

The challenge for Maine with our educational system is our return on investment. Maine is in the top third of all our states in education spending, yet we are in the bottom third in results. As Governor, it will be my priority to reform Maine's educational system so that students have the opportunity to create results that correspond with our significant investment in the system.

Many educational reforms will not cost taxpayers additional money. There is plenty of money in the system; it's how we choose to prioritize our spending that is impacting educational results. Increased competition will breed excellence; therefore, I support statewide choice by implementing a voucher system as well as the creation of new charter schools.

The current trend in education is teaching to the test scores to boost test results. We need to eliminate teaching to national assessments and allow teachers to create a learning environment that challenges all of our students to excel to their own diverse strengths rather than a standard of mediocrity.

I will not seek to have Augusta make all curriculum decisions for local school districts. I believe that locally elected school board members and parents should have input in their children's education. This includes allowing local school boards to provide guidance on classroom discussions of industry, natural resources, population, and economic development topics as they relate to the economy of the local region in which the schools reside and classrooms discussions on the origin of life with the inclusion of scientific theories.

For Special Education, we should eliminate the disparity between school districts in identifying and supporting students requiring special education services.

Finally, my goal as Governor will be to lower the average class size, not increase it. For example, school districts must work together to pool their resources. We fail to use our tax dollars wisely when some classes have as few as 4 students and others up to 25. A goal of 16 to 20 students is achievable with the resources we have committed to our educational system.

Read it and weep, you are unlikely to see anything with any real depth. LePage does not intend to lead nor govern, he intends to dismantle.

Postscript: By the way, the last phrase in the fourth paragraph, "classrooms discussions on the origin of life with the inclusion of scientific theories" was recently added to the site; so perhaps there is some evolution in Mr. LePage's policy development.

You are cordially invited...

...to DirigoBlue.com to read and comment on our gubernatorial candidates' answers to a series of specific questions on education in Maine.

2010 MAINE DEMOCRATIC GUBERNATORIAL PRIMARY
Questionnaire on Education

In the first of a seven-part series, each of the Democratic candidates for governor have responded to a series of questions on education compiled by Bruce Bourgoine, Derek Viger of the Augusta Insider, and Gerald Weinand, editor of Dirigo Blue. The remaining questions and responses will appear over the next six days at 10:00 a.m.

School Funding Fallacy and Folly

Throughout the state we see headlines about school budget slashing that actually avoid the overarching topic of school funding in favor of budget tinkering chatter that will not, in the end, deliver the resources schools desperately require. We need to understand how we arrived at this point. Public schools are under pressure financially due to three reasons:

- Repeated assault from the right to ultimately push schools into the privatization sphere where the selfish use of personal resources will determine education outcomes and a new business paradigm of education delivery will arise to create profits for investors. This privatization effort is characterized by an over reliance on high stake testing to create winners and losers. Instead of concentrating on egalitarian success for all, there is a drive to deprive the losers of funding while funneling a lopsided amount of cash resources to the winners, presumably charter and private schools. Underlying this privatization effort is a distain for unionized workers and hence a great deal of meaningless talk about merit pay and meaningful emphasis on non-union teacher forces. In the end, should the right destroy public education, schools for the general populace will continue to exist as dilapidated warehouses for those without voice or capital full of advertising and low cost service delivery but profitable for some investor. Private schools will become like private colleges, expensive and out of reach but securing a network for a small upper class and the financial elites to which vouchers will be applied in part toward the cost.

- The funding of education is inordinately built on a myth of local control. In days of yore, local control meant a community building a schoolhouse, hiring a teacher, and providing financial support. This small town 19th century approach is no longer applicable because localities are so much of a part of a larger web of services that are appropriate to be delivered by government and funded with broad based taxes. Localities also had their own industries, sheriff, poor house, et cetera which became outmoded as towns became suburbs, cities evolved, and rural population percentages and jobs declined. Education’s role in society became of increased interest of national and state politics. However, the national role became one of authority by issuing mandates with little funding role. States became an unreliable funding partner dependent on the ups and downs of the national economy that also issued unfunded directives. Rules, laws, and expectations have grown far beyond the scope of local control and thus the myth within local control is that it really is one of primarily local control of limiting budgets to keep at bay upset property tax payers unless it is a wealthy community.

- Education is not a priority in the United States of America. It gets much rhetorical lip service, we hear constantly about our solemn duty to children through education, and the vital importance of excellent education in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive world. But that is where it ends; we will not place education as a funding priority. We seek ways to tinker with this enormous system to tune out a few bucks toward a goal of efficiency. We have blinders on to the fact that excellent education may not be efficient with a traditional business bottom-line. Sure, the bus routes ought to make sense, the buildings should be smartly designed, and wastefulness of financial resources that do not support or create knowledge value ought to be controlled. But the largest expense, staffing, especially if contracted is not going to improve education. Our emphasis on high stakes testing or racing to the top creation of winners and losers does nothing to establish and maintain a critical funding foundation to be placed under all students to maximize educational success on an egalitarian basis. To simplify the understanding of our priorities as a nation, one needs only to look at the portion of our budget devoted to defense versus that devoted to education. Would balancing the two or reversing the equation be of greater strategic value to the United States? This is a debate we seem to avoid at all costs to avoid costs that may in the end create the greatest costs.

We need to repel the right’s assault, dismiss the myth of local control and get on with a national debate to quickly yield solid funding for public schools as a strategic priority.

Aspiration or Abandonment

Perhaps it is a consequence of our time that “we the people” allow our politics and elected representatives to desert a core service to our society. Public education in the United States is a failure and it now primarily exists in a netherworld of directionless drifting and woeful defunding. A lack of commitment with an articulated vision is not expressed nor supported by any current stakeholders. American education is a ship of cut spars, with failing systems, anchorless, and drifting just prior to sinking.

For decades, the primary focus of education has not been improved evolution of the delivery of knowledge to propel our society forward but rather the shedding of educational concerns to pare down to a focus on the mechanics of funding. This is not to say that there has not been lip service and limp action using the language of caring about education; there is a wealth of such activity and some of it is genuine in its concern. But by and large all the talk about concentrating resources in the classroom, no child left untested, charter schools, and other varied “pop” education chatter have been driven by a desire to live (fund) within our means that we have decided, by the manner in which we prioritize our expectations, as being meager. We are starving education and are talking as if it were not so. “Putting our money where our mouth is” appears not to be a challenge we willingly rise to meet.

Yet there is a yearning for our children to have the best education and recognition that a global economy demands more of our forthcoming generations. There is a recognizable need for functional literate entry into adult society and an even deeper realization that our democracy benefits from an educated electorate. Yet the countercurrent flowing against our desires that we have paid most heed to is money. We have decided that education is too costly even as we say it is a top priority. We have decided that taxes to pay for education are too high as we unconvincingly say that teachers are underpaid. We prioritize military security borne from fear over that of societal security delivered by a superior educational system. When we allow the blind weight of budget cutting to fall heavily upon schools rather than taxing to meet our aspirations, we make a deliberate choice.

Local control of schools is long past its relevance from when a community banded together to give their children the blessings of an education. It has become a financing scheme for passing the bill to the pauper. The national government, largely without any significant role in direct basic education funding, makes rules that push costs down allowing it to control its financial deficits by allowing knowledge deficits. It refuses to tax with its broadest span of ability or prioritize its expenditures accordingly to fund education. It creates paper visions not backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Our state governments in turn see the forest but clear cut the trees as they refuse to use their broader taxing authority to push away costs. Their self imposed or constitutional limitations to operate without deficits rely only on half of the budget equation when it comes to schools; expenses will be cut but revenues will not be raised to support education. Finally at the local level, where the taxing is most direct and most unequal, the pauper municipal or school districts face the voter who cries thief at what is seen as throwing money at dysfunction and there is dysfunction aplenty.

In Maine we have played our part in this sad theater. There is no core vision for education currently despite once being a leader in core curriculum development. As the wheels of finance came off the school bus, we abandoned all principle in fear of a tax revolt. A poorly conceived and ill designed scheme for school consolidation with cost cutting of administration as its sole true goal was ineffectively implemented. And now curtailment order after curtailment order given arbitrarily with out regard to neither harming education nor examining temporal revenue measures is wreaking destructive damage on our schools.

Throughout this Maine state story we have never addressed aspirations, articulated a vision, solicited opinion on educational delivery design, but only focused on our purse. Maybe a counterintuitive increase in administrators is needed to support teachers with more specialized resources from literacy specialists to human resource managers. Perhaps a well designed unified system operating under a powerful vision that adequately invests in education as a top priority from birth to adult training and enrichment might become the top enticement for creative people and families to live, work, and create work in Maine. Most discouragingly, we are making short-sighted definitive choices right now that a second grader in need of reading assistance will not get it, that a middle school student will not be introduced to the benefits of another language, that another high school sophomore will drop out, that access to higher education will be out of reach for someone, and that thousands upon thousands of our future potential citizens will have a poor education.

A pathway to having a renewed discussion on education and an emergence of leadership for educational excellence lies within this year’s Maine gubernatorial race. As voters and citizens we must press our national representatives to demand national vision on education, full funding of every mandate, and a more rational prioritization of education. At the local level, we need to expose the abandonment of principle forced upon us and identify the local stop gap measures that we can enact. However, a broader state conversation on establishing a genuine vision that meets our aspirations for the forthcoming generations could be best facilitated by a candidate for governor willing to lead on this issue with a focus on excellence and a willingness to forthrightly address the revenue commitments necessary to meet the investment challenge. Please step forward.