It was interesting to see the reaction last week when outgoing Commissioner of the Dept. of Education Susan Gendron announced her resignation.
Newspaper columnists and television talking heads across the state praised Gendron for her work overseeing an unwieldy department in tough budget times. It reminded us of the old management trick of giving a bad employee a great recommendation so somebody else will hire them and take the problem off your hands.
Gendron was given credit, and rightfully so we think, for moving Maine away from the home grown MEAs into more regionalized testing that will better provide an accurate picture of where Maine students are relative to their peers in other states.
Other than that, in regards to all the good she has supposedly done, we couldn’t disagree more.
No one mentioned the fact that under Gendron’s watch LD 1 was perverted from a recommended minimum spending guideline to an ill-fitting spending cap.
Gendron also ran herd over the Baldacci budget shell game of moving money around and calling it “savings.”
Remember in 2004, the people of Maine went to the polls and ordered the state to back up its long promised funding support for education to the tune of 55 percent of education costs and 100 percent of specials education costs? Neither has happened. Not even close.
Of course, it was also on her watch that school consolidation was rammed through. We support the will of the people at the polls, and the issue has been decided but the fact remains, school consolidation is an ill fitting suit for rural areas such as Lincoln County.
Gendron of course was just taking marching orders from the top. Ultimately the responsibility for the havoc she has wreaked lies at the feet of Gov. John Baldacci.
The good news is Baldacci himself is on his way out. Maybe then we can read about all the good deeds he’s done.
