Maine's Need

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Testimony from Maine People

     We'll be posting the many testimonials to the need for public charter schools that we have in our files as soon as time permits!  If you are a student, parent, teacher, administrator, business person, government official, etc, and you would like to add to our collection, please contact MACS.

Support charter schools 

I hope this bill passes. Something needs to be done to help these children and their families. These small schools are needed so the staff has time - not only to work with the children - but also to help support the families with parenting issues. Just the basics of making sure your child has eaten breakfast before coming to school does indeed prevent outbursts and fits of violence. 

Our school is on the thin thread of survival. Parents struggle to pay even a minimum tuition so their children who have failed in traditional settings can have successful learning experiences. Trying to do good in this world and not getting paid a decent salary is wearing. But, when I see how these children who are failing before are doing now - proud and confident with skills - I know it is well worth it.

Carney McRae Doucette
Come Spring School
Union

PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL SUPPORTERS SAY:

• “Public charter schools represent the only real opportunity for democratic school choice... Charter schools support all members of our populations in securing the educational experience that is right for their children.”
  -  Alan Furth, Lubec, veteran Maine teacher with 25 years experience
   

• "Public charter schools would energize many students, parents, teachers and administrators who may be frustrated with their current situation, and who would reinvest their energies with expanded opportunities.”
    - Roger Brainerd, veteran Maine teacher and technology coordinator
   

• “I have worked with teens for over ten years, and I have observed that no school is right for every child... The key for me is offering public school options to those who can’t afford private school options, because no school is right for every child.”
    -  Bob Summers, Maine non-profit administrator
   

• “Every one of our children deserves the opportunity to be educated in a way that honors who they are as learners and respects the inherent gifts they have to offer the world.”  -  Jane Disney, Maine teacher, founder of a hands-on science program
   

• “Too many contemporary conventional public schools lack creative teaching and learning and fail to operate as open learning places conducive of diverse teaching methods and learning styles.”  - Vera Francis, Maine Native American artist and teacher
   

• “Parents should have the chance to have their children educated in a way that will help them progress maximally.  I am searching for the right placement for a grandson who lives in poverty, so a private school is not a consideration...  I would like to have a better choice available for him and other students in Maine.”  - A Maine grandparent
   

• “Charter schools tend to be small schools and there are many students who thrive in small, intimate learning environments.  A large school can never be a small school no matter how many programs are  initiated to create smaller environments in large schools....Charter schools provide varied choices for ALL students, including low income families who presently do not have the kind of options families of financial means have.”  -  Marylyn Wentworth, Maine educator and founder of an alternative school
   

• “LD 1640 would allow currently existing alternative education programs in Maine to be chartered. Our research has demonstrated that most alternative education programs have been extremely successful in meeting the multiple and complex needs of many of our state's most vulnerable students, and have provided them with the opportunity to obtain a regular high school diploma. Extensive interviews with students in Maine's alternative education programs during the past three years have revealed a very common theme:  "Without the availability of these alternative education programs, many of these students would not have remained in school."
  -  Prof. Bill Davis, UMaine Professor
   

• “Maine has every right to boast about its schools....Yet no one working in the schools today would deny that our schools work poorly for some of the children who attend them... Children who do not thrive in school run a significant risk of not thriving in adulthood.  Maine cannot afford a population speckled with failing adults.  Failing adults cost th esystem a great deal economically, as well as socially.  Charter schools enable teachers and administrators to make new kinds of schools desgined specifically to improve the school experience for those children who can not find what they need in existing public schools.”
  - Kit Harrison, Maine teacher.
   

To contact MACS: macs@mainecharterschools.org