To the Editor:
All my life we have heard the phrases “independent Mainer” and “local control.”
Thanks to the most incompetent administration ever to sit in Augusta, I won’t bother to enumerate the issues, the independent Mainer and local control no longer exist.
The Wiscasset High School mascot issue, right or wrong, is a perfect example. It was decided by people from out of town and from away. It is no one’s business except the hard working taxpayers of Wiscasset. I would urge the people of Wiscasset to immediately withdraw from their RSU and take back local control of their school system. The situation is only going to get worse.
Of course, the state is blackmailing the towns by threatening to withhold state aid to education, but the state has been cutting aid to schools for the last eight years. It has never paid 55 percent of the cost of education mandated by law in Maine. So what is the big deal? Is what little aid that Wiscasset receives from the state worth giving up local control of their schools? I think not.
School systems all over the state are losing local control and costing taxpayers more money.
Look at the mess Lincoln County is in with the Two Bridges Regional Jail: another dumb consolidation idea from Augusta.
Craig Elliott, Bristol
