To the editor:
I read with interest your article about Dominic Morse. Thank you for helping his family raise awareness of autism by taking the time to get to know Dominic and presenting in your story just how far he’s come.
As the mother of a 17-year-old with autism, I just can’t help but comment, however, on your choice of words in the first paragraph of the story. You said that Dominic likes all the things a typical 11-year-old enjoys, but that he is “not typical.” I think it is very important for people to know that kids with autism are typical.
My son is not defined by his autism and, therefore, I never refer to him as autistic. He might have autism, but he is, in fact, (just like his peers) a very typical teenager (just as Dominic is, first and foremost, a very typical pre-teen). That’s why it was difficult for me to read “not typical” in the first paragraph of your article. My child is very intelligent, curious, a tech whiz, and a big fan of comedy — just a typical teenager. However, just like Dominic, because he has autism, he has had to work 10 times harder than his peers to get to this point (his classmates would confirm this fact, too, because they’ve seen it with their own eyes).
It made me smile to hear that Dominic received ABA therapy early on. You see, our son was the first to receive ABA (in 1998) in Aroostook County because we researched and lobbied Child Development Services for it back then. Our home program was the pilot program and I was trained and became his first teacher. We may have put all the work into getting this programming approved back then, but our son was the one who, with all of his hard work, proved that ABA was effective. Our son had formal ABA interventions through second grade (I worked with him on weekends even while he was mainstreamed in school), but his teachers, one-on-one aides and we (his family) have employed its principles to this day.
Our son is truly the embodiment of the success of early intervention. I applaud Dominic’s mother for refusing to take “no” for an answer when Dominic was three and still not progressing. When we were lobbying CDS for ABA home programming, we heard “no” several times. Thank goodness we pressed on.
ABA saved our son’s life. It is rewarding to know that our son, in some small way, paved the way for kids like Dominic to succeed.
Lisa Vaillancourt, Van Buren
Elephant in the House
To the editor:
Since the 2010 elections, Maine citizens have been repeatedly insulted and embarrassed by actions and statements of Governor LePage that have been widely publicized. As painful as that may be for most of us, there are much more serious threats resulting from the Republican sweep of the Maine legislature that do not get as much attention. Citizens need to be better informed about voting records of the Republican majority who made decisions that adversely affect so many Aroostook citizens. In the Aug. 29 edition of The Star-Herald, local incumbents Tyler Clark and Mike Willette “tout strong voting record in Augusta.” Their statements echo each other and Republican values heard across the nation in this election.
As the candidate for House District 6 challenging Tyler Clark, I have a different view of these “accomplishments.” On labor, for instance, Tyler voted against LD 447 to increase the minimum wage for Maine workers to $8 per hour. He voted “yes” on LD 1725 which delays and reduces unemployment insurance benefits and “yes” on LD 1207 that repeals the law allowing agricultural employees such as those at DeCoster Egg Farms to have union representation. He voted “yes” on LD 1913 that restricts some of the critical benefits formerly paid to Maine’s most injured workers. All of these votes significantly reduce the ability of workers to put money directly into the local economy, and to support the businesses they would be spending money at.
Reductions to Medicaid and reform of the pension and welfare systems mean those no longer able to pay for the things they formerly could buy at local businesses will be impoverishing the whole community. A retired teacher says, “So maybe I’ll get up to $100 a year in income tax cuts. But with cost of living adjustments eliminated for three years and then capped at 3 percent on the first $20,000, I’ll have a lot less to spend in the local economy.”
Tax cuts, the most lauded “accomplishment” of this legislature, are the most grievous to the well-being of local economies. An MPBN broadcast reports that “Garret Martin, the Executive Director of … Maine Center for Economic Policy, says … the few extra dollars in their pockets from tax cuts will be needed to pay for the cost of services that will be shifted back to counties and to local municipal governments.” This means higher property taxes and reductions in local services that we are already seeing in Aroostook. And evidence shows that tax cuts do not create the promised jobs; instead they create greater wealth for the wealthiest. Find out for yourself before you vote: “Do tax cuts create jobs? No, just deficits.” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2011/05/03/do-tax-cuts-create-jobs/).
Who will benefit the most from these “accomplishments?” Could it be the elephants in the House, and in the Senate, and in the Governor’s office?
Darrell Adams, Mars Hill
The corporatization of our schools
To the editor:
There have been many stories in papers statewide recently about the radical education reforms being imposed on our state by our new, Heritage-Foundation-linked, wide-eyed young education commissioner, Steven Bowen. The latest brouhaha involves his constant over-ruling of local superintendents when they have denied often frivolous requests for students to attend schools in districts where they do not reside.
Hopefully, this will serve as the desperately needed wake-up call to all who treasure public education and local control. Sadly, to this point, the MEA has been largely silent as the corporate takeover of Maine public schools gears up. Reportedly, they are hoping the grassroots will rise up and do their job for them. Let’s hope so!
These radical reforms did not spring fully formed from the mind of our 30-something Education Commissioner, you can be sure of that. Most of what is being done to Maine is a result of major corporations and tax-exempt foundations putting pressure on (and working incestuously with) the educrats in D.C. The goal is total control of education by corporations, for profit, and the dismantling of the last vestiges of local control.
When I interviewed Paul LePage during his last debate at UMPI prior to his election , I got a personal promise from him that he would be 100 percent committed to local control of education. That is why our program endorsed him. We still feel that he has been doing much good in cutting waste and bureaucratic red tape, but unfortunately, in the area of education policy he has been totally out to lunch with the corporatists at Heritage.
The Heritage Foundation is not a truly conservative organization, but instead, a pseudoconservative operation that puts profits before people. The reforms being considered (or already adopted) include ramming through a national curriculum for Maine students (done), bringing in charter schools with no elected school boards to compete with taxpayer dollars — against local schools (done), doing away with proven education methodologies in favor of totally unproven “direct instruction” i.e. computer brainwashing for the worker bees needed on the re-emerging global plantation (implementing soon), and taking away all the control from local folks and erasing district boundaries (the subject of the latest outcry.)
I am not suggesting that public education in Maine is perfect, but the reform needed is largely to do away with reforms and to go back to proven traditional educational methods that work. Our schools have been intentionally made over into social service centers over the past couple decades. Teachers have been intentionally burdened with myriads of responsibilities that interfere with their ability to teach. We test, test, test, without taking time to learn, or to learn anything but what teachers know will be on the test.
Yes, our public schools have declined recently — that has all been on purpose. In order to accept the final destruction of public education and local control, Bowen (and all the “change agents” like him) have been busy destroying our traditional education system to make it look as bad as possible. This then allows them to bring forward their proffered solution. It’s called “crisis management,” or “The Hegelian Dialectic” and it is used all the time by corporatists and globalists who literally want to remake America within their top-down , total-control paradigm.
It is time for local school boards and superintendents and parents to simply rise up and say “no.” Calling for the resignation of Steven Bowen would be a great first step. Getting hearings held on the corporatization of public education in Maine would be a great second step.
You promised us local control, Governor. Time to listen to those who got you elected a bit more, and to those who worked against you in the election and the primary (like the Heritage folks) a lot less!
Steve Martin, Amity
AroostookWatchmen.com
