Tue, 01/22/2013 - 12:30pm

William C. Shuttleworth

Dear Governor LePage,

It has been five weeks since the tragic, sorrowful deaths of 27 people in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. (Note that the shooter is included as one of these terrible deaths, another horrific, inexplicable story that must be addressed).

Where are you, Governor? You have used your office, your weekly newscasts to repeatedly address domestic violence and, I, for one, applaud you for this effort. Domestic violence, often perpetrated at the sad expense of little ones and women, has touched your heart, probably a direct function of your early childhood. But, where are you about violence, in general? I want you to use your strong, powerful, often strident voice to send an unvarnished message of moral outrage against all violence. And, then I want you to convene a broad stakeholders group to recommend legislation, social action, and community attention that will address and reduce violence in the state of Maine.

The only real comment that came from your Cabinet was a short message from your education commissioner, Stephen Bowen, who sent a short note to superintendents asking them to review their emergency action plans. But, why have you not taken the Constitutional authority given to you by your office to do something? If the reason for your odd silence (odd, in that you are not microphone shy to let us know what you think about almost any other topic), is tied to not wanting to rile the gun activists, I am not asking you to come out and recommend limiting gun owner rights.   At least not now, but wouldn’t it be as prudent as asking schools to review school safety for you to ask your Attorney General to give you a detailed briefing of such things as background checks, who and how a person can buy a gun in Maine and dutifully monitoring the distribution and sale of guns in our state?

But, let’s sidebar the gun issue completely and talk about violence, in general. From my perspective and research as an educator and trained psychological provider, there are threads that explain violence. Certainly, there is no one to one equation, but we do know that violence is often connected to drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, family disunity, domestic violence (I have already given you credit for this), mental illness and the growing, ever-creeping loss of hope, rooted perhaps by a world that is constantly at war with itself, state and federal elected officials who treat taxpayers as pawns for their own narcissism, increasing incivility in the media, video games, television shows and social networking.

I am a person of action, and so I am offering five recommendations that, if implemented with fidelity with your leadership and follow up action, will make a difference in our state.

1. Convene a summit of no more that 20 people who actually give a damn and are wise to send to you recommendations that you can act on immediately to reduce violence in our society. I would like to see educators, law enforcement, mental health, parents, the church, children’s advocates, physicians, drug and alcohol specialist and your office at this table. Political hacks can stay out of this meeting. Don’t limit this team to just bigwigs, department heads career bureaucrats that are driven to keep the status quo. Include someone, let say, comedian Bob Marley, or singer Ray Lamontagne, who both made it despite their tough upbringing.   Give them no more than a month to come to you with recommendations. You have the power to create this team and I volunteer my 42 years of work in service to children in this state to be at that table. You probably you will get recommendations that are blunt and needed; so be it.

2.   Provide ongoing support to schools in the areas of bullying, mental health support for needy children and consulting services to strengthen school safety.

3. Use your powers vested to you to control the flow of illegal drugs into our state. I know we have the largest coastline in America, and it is not your total responsibility, but you certainly have a knack for raising hell and this is time your abrupt manner should be deployed to all those federal and state organizations that should keep our state drug-free.

4. Model, encourage and expect that no child or family is left bereft of hope and promise. Wow! How do I expect you to do this? One family, one child at a time. Please support alternative education programs for needy kids, please encourage big business to fund after-school programs, please link welfare payments to the expectation/requirement that recipients get vocational training to improve their lot in life, and let us hear from you that every child in this state is sacred. If every decision you make is filtered by asking, “how will this affect every child in this state,” great social and cultural change would happen overnight.

5. Finally, be one of us. You have very ordinary and pedestrian roots and I like that about you. But, why don’t I see you on the floor with kindergarten children sitting on your lap, why don’t I see you visiting wounded veterans at Togus, why don’t I see you showing up at a senior citizens breakfast at the local Legion hall, why don’t I see you at a high school basketball game hooting it up and why don’t I see you at an Adult Education Center, honoring the men and women working to improve their lives? You are our governor. We expect you to be somewhat paternal, nurturing, thought provoking, kind beyond words and always sending invisible thread of hope and promise so urgently needed in our state.

William Shuttleworth is Superintendent of Schools for Monhegan, parent of three great kids, grandfather of four, and resident of Lincolnville. William remains a strong advocate for children and families and can be contacted at wshuttleworth@hotmail.com