[Local-Maine-Schools] Bill to require completion of a college application

[Gail Marshall]

Dear Representative Cummings,

I write to you as a parent of a student about to graduate and go to  
college, a graduate of Maine schools from kindergarden through law  
school, a school board member, a Democrat, and a strong believer in  
post secondary education. But I write to express concerns about your  
proposal to make it a graduation requirement that all students  
complete a college application. It is not because I am opposed to  
your apparent intentions, but because as a matter of public policy I  
think it is misguided for legislators to micro-manage our educational  
system in this way. In this case you have the apparent advantage of  
Poland's school's experience. But, I submit, there is a vast  
difference between a school district that actively adopts, as an  
integral part of a larger strategy, the college application  
requirement and one that has it scotch-taped on to everything else  
because the Legislature tells it to. It is the former that will  
succeed. The latter may well not.

The mandates our educators and students face have become a teetering  
house of cards. Each card that is piled on may be well-intentioned,  
and from afar seem benign, easy enough to accomplish, and designed to  
achieve it's intended goal. But it is the big picture that we must  
always consider, and very often, these bits and pieces do not add up  
to a coherent whole. While you as a legislator and I as a school  
board member are positioned to create policy goals and directions, we  
hire or appoint professionals to work for and with us to put together  
the bits and pieces of the puzzle so that at the end we get the best  
we can afford for our kids.

If you want this to happen and I don't disagree with you about it's  
desirability, I suggest that the proper way to do it would be to task  
the Department of Education to work WITH schools to develop and  
implement strategies that will provide a more comprehensive means for  
students to not only fill out a form at the end of the tunnel, but to  
develop from day one the aspiration, skills and opportunities to not  
only apply, but to gain acceptance, be able to finance, and succeed  
in education beyond high school.   Unfortunately, currently you have  
an educational administration in Augusta that operates in a manner  
that is far too similar to the house-of- cards model.  Our schools  
are besieged by a constantly shifting set of demands that come from  
"on high", drive our agendas, and then fail because they are not  
first grounded in reality. For example, for years it was a popular,  
self-congratulatory perception in Augusta that the local area  
assessment system was a bold stroke of educational genius. But it  
collapsed under it's own weight; and do you know who is buried under  
that wreckage?Teachers, administrators, and worst of all, our  
children. And Ms. Gendron's prevarication to the contrary, it was  
DOE's over-reaching demands, threats and lack of leadership that  
caused the problem, not the a failure of those on the front line  
trying to do what they were told.

I digress, but I do so because the educational leadership from  
Augusta is so broken that just piling on this one more little  
requirement is, at this point, more like pouring gasoline on the  
grill, rather than cooking up something nutritious for our kids.

Please do not proceed with this bill at this time, and consider the  
larger policy implications of educational legislation as you continue  
to attempt to work with us to provide the best we can for our  
children. Do not give up on attempting to improve our schools, but  
know that you have thousands of talented and dedicated educational  
leaders and teachers in our schools who should be far more involved  
in making it happen.

Tell your people to call my people.

Thank you,

Gail Marshall
PO Box 578
Mount Desert, ME 04660
244-7219
PS: You may have noticed I did not discuss the harm being done to our  
schools, particularly our small schools, right now simply because of  
the way this administration is pursuing it's consolidation agenda,  
never mind what the results themselves may do. That is a "don't-get- 
me-started" matter of epic proportions.