Friends, neighbors, coworkers, parents, seniors, and all citizens of our outstanding town of Scarborough, please let’s not argue with each other over something we ultimately all want for our Scarborough children. We want them to grow up happy, healthy, and having been exposed to the best education possible.

Not many of you will remember, however, back in the early 1990s a group of concerned citizens and parents formed a group called PASE (parents for academic strengthening of education). We were not well received by the Scarborough school administration and its teachers. We did not intend for them to feel threatened; we just wanted to work with them on some curriculum issues, we thought could be strengthened. We were very naive.

The superintendent resigned (we had a significant membership) and guess who took her place? None other than Susan Gendron, the most savvy education politician I have yet to encounter. Look at her now! She used on our group what I like to call the “divide and conquer” technique. What she did was to divide our group into two factions GOLD (grouping for optimal learning development, now called multi-age) against traditional (one grade). She was smooth. We didn’t even realize what she was doing until it was too late. We got into arguments about GOLD/Traditional, when that had never been the original issue. It cost us dearly, in wasted time and lost friendships. We did get some things accomplished. Parents and their children were allowed to choose what level high school classes they wanted to take without having to be recommended by their middle school teachers, and we finally got a full-time principal for the high school among some other important items to improve our school system. However, these things were accomplished by putting good members on the Board of Education (like Jack Buckley), not by dealing directly with teachers or administration. Actually, Ms. Gendron quickly moved on (out of Scarborough, too political here, she had bigger plans).

Now I see the same technique being used on our good, well meaning parents, over the current sex education curriculum in the Scarborough Schools. Maine Educational Association must teach this technique in superintendent school, to deal with the “rabble rouser parents” that simply want to contribute to their childrens’ education, things that they feel are important that their children need to learn. Or, for that matter, it’s used for things like holiday celebrations, special education, dumbing down our high school curriculum by doing away with level 2 college preparatory classes. I could go on. The mantra of the Scarborough schools and the board of education is that they want parent involvement. However, they want input only if it does not involve anything of academic substance or curriculum questions. Just keep on volunteering in the classrooms and doing all that busy work that the teachers don’t have time to do, and the relationship will remain fine.

After reading Mr. Damicis and Mr. Kip’s editorials in last week’s paper, I must ask them. Do they really feel that parents that don’t have children in the Scarborough School System should not be allowed to have their opinions count on Scarborough school issues? Democracy-definition: Government by the people. Have you ever bothered to ask these Scarborough parents that choose to home school their children or send them to private schools, why they made their decisions? I’m quite sure your editorials were written in that anger mode (brought on by divide/conquer), and that you don’t have issues with Evangelical Christians, Muslims, Catholics (I think, Karen Vachon’s religious affiliation). Do you?

As I see the bottom line, the Scarborough sex education curriculum is incomplete unless it includes some abstinence based education. I mean when the Scarborough High School principal needs to send a letter home to all incoming freshmen parents, warning them that there had been an increased incidences of freshmen girls giving sexual favors to senior boys for an invitation to the senior prom, and he was not going to allow freshmen to attend proms in the future, there is a problem. Whoa, some freshmen girls are 13 years old! Who has their head in the sand? Our moral compass is broken, and it is in need of repair.

Please, let’s not argue. We all really want the same things for our children. Don’t let the Scarborough Schools divide us as a community. We have great kids. Let’s arm them with all the ammunition they need to take on this changing world. They need to see that we as Scarborough citizens are not impressed by meaningless “Award Winning” special interest group ploys. Our school administrators and teachers need to be careful and responsible when they make their political ideals apparent to their students and citizen in their professional positions. We can meet all our students’ needs. We can have it all. We are the people of Scarborough and I would not want to raise my children any place else.

Kathleen Schuyler

Scarborough