by Jonathan Reisman

Many Governors have made education policy a signature issue. For Angus King in the 1990s, it was bringing laptops and technology into Maine’s public schools. For John Baldacci in the 2000s, it was school administration consolidation. In 2009 Paul LePage appointed a reform-oriented/pro-school choice Education commissioner, which so terrified Democrats and the Maine Education Association that they spent millions of dollars to defeat legislative Republican majorities (successfully) and his reelection efforts in 2014 (unsuccessfully) and 2022 (successfully).

Democratic Governors have generally supported the policy goals of the teacher’s unions, while Republican governors have been more sympathetic to school choice and parental as opposed to educrat control. This has been playing out both nationally and in Maine for both K-12 and higher education. Nationally, Republican Governors in Virginia, Florida, and Arkansas have been leading the way in opposing the National Education Association and Democratic anti-choice agenda favoring woke gender and critical race theory indoctrination.

Virginia Governor Youngkin arguably won the election in his blue state by supporting parental control, especially after his Democratic opponent proclaimed that parents had no business trying to control their children’s education. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took on groomer indoctrinators, the entire LGBTQ+ mafia, and Disney with very popular legislation banning gender and sexuality indoctrination/education for 5-8-year-olds (K-3). Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has taken steps to ban critical race theory from Arkansan public schools, while DeSantis has directed that public expenditures promoting critical race theory be transparently reported. Of course, the woke educrats and teacher’s unions in all three states are attacking their popular Governors as dangerous threats to Democracy and groomer/indoctrinator freedom (OK, I made that last one up).

In Maine, the Mills administration is promoting critical race theory under the guise of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In addition, the administration is promoting an “anonymous” survey of Maine middle and high school students with questions on gender identity, sexuality, and sexual experience.

Meanwhile, one Southern Maine school social worker ostensibly violated policy by giving a chest binder to a student without parental consent/notification and faced no consequences for doing so. In Western Maine, voters recalled two woke school board members when their no parental notice policies were exposed, but not before the Mills administration and the State’s leading Education lawyers tried to derail the recall.

One prominent but usually downplayed and ignored source for the CRT and gender identity poison is higher education. Woke public school teachers were trained and indoctrinated by the overwhelmingly leftist faculty in our universities, and the University of Maine System is no exception. The woke poison has come with a cost- enrollment is down in higher education both nationally and in Maine, with potentially devastating budget consequences. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion administrators, whose only job is to indoctrinate and prevent thought crime and viewpoint diversity, have exploded in higher education. Faculty in all disciplines must make diversity, equity, and inclusion loyalty oath statements for grants, promotion, and tenure. Republican Governors like DeSantis and Youngkin have responded to the enrollment and budget problems by trying to excise the leftist rot with executive orders, trustee appointments, and legislation. Governor Mills has responded by proposing significantly increased taxpayer support with no strings attached, appointing reliable leftists as trustees, and by supporting the Democrat progressive narrative that educrats, not parents, know best. I predict that public schools and universities will continue to decline for the balance of Governor Mills’ term. The demand for power and lucrative compensation of government-mandated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Czarinas will continue to grow.