All atwitter about shutdown days

The potential for school shutdown days this academic year entered Maine's legislative sphere last week. Ever since, it's been creating a stir.

A brief scan on Twitter shows the idea of shutting down school a few days to balance the state budget has struck a nerve.

The fact that state education officials are even entertaining the idea shows they don't have students as their top priority, says David Crocker, chairman of the campaign urging voters to adopt a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR.

"Had politicians controlled spending, we would not be facing such a massive shortfall, and Augusta's political class would not be threatening Maine students' education to fill its budget hole," says Crocker.

Of course, the groups who make public education their business are campaigning against TABOR.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rosa Scarcelli has also tweeted about the potential shutdown days. "For a state that already has one of the shortest school years in the country, there has to be a better solution," she wrote on her campaign Web site.

While she hasn't been tweeting, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron, has been talking a lot about shutdown days this week.

"Commissioner Gendron is very much in favor of looking first at teacher-only days for possible furlough days," David Connerty-Marin, Gendron's spokesman, wrote to me in an e-mail. That way, the impact on students wouldn't be as large. But the savings wouldn't either.

In an e-mail to superintendents today, Gendron outlined where the proposal for school shutdown days heads next. A "working group" of superintendents, special education directors and others will examine short-term savings strategies like the shutdown days. The group will undertake "careful examination of the relevant legal issues and the impact on educational programs, not to mention impacts on parents."