Home Rule Town or State Subsidiary? Public Hearing Testimony on “Repealed and Replaced” School Charter.
Testimony submitted for hearing on Boothbay Maine School Charter on May 9
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I have received information about a public hearing scheduled for the Boothbay School Charter №1786 H.P. 1149 this coming Tuesday May 9 2003
LD 1786 is scheduled for public hearing before the Joint Standing Committee on Education on Tuesday, May 9, 2023 at 1:00 pm. If you plan to testify at the hearing onsite in the State House Complex, please bring 20 copies of your testimony to the hearing for distribution to the committee by the committee clerk. If you wish to testify remotely over ZOOM, you may upload your testimony using this link: https://www.mainelegislature.org/testimony/
Submit a Testimony! This is the testimony that I submitted:
My name is Susan Mackenzie Andersen. I am a member of the Boothbay Community School District where I attended school through grade 12, graduating in 1966. My parents moved to the region in 1952 to establish a small free enterprise business, Andersen Design, that designed and made ceramics and taught those skills on the job to the women who used to work in the fish packing industry. The original school charter, which is now being repealed and replaced, was created in 1953.
I am also an independent researcher, and have studied the Maine economic development policy put into place in 1976 which I submit is the driving force behind the repealing and replacing of the Community School Districts local charter with state law. Laws cannot be understood on a stand-alone basis but must be considered in their larger context. I have been narrating the story of Maine’s incremental transition from a Home Rule State in 1969 to a centrally managed corporate state in 2023. I publish the Substack Newsletter, The Individual vs the Empire.
My testimony is complex and so I feel it is best submitted in written form but would like to speak briefly about it so that people will know it is here.
I attended the publicized first meeting about the school charter after I saw a public announcement in the Boothbay Register. Present were the Town selectmen of Boothbay and Boothbay…
