BERNIE HUEBNER TESTIMONY


        Testimony Before The Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs

                        by Bernie Huebner, Waterville

                          Wednesday, April 11, 2001

                     State Office Building, Augusta, Maine



Senator Mitchell, Representative Richard, and Committee members,


     My name is Bernie Huebner.  I live in Waterville and teach in the
Skowhegan area schools.  And I wish to thank you for your willingness to
listen to yet more testimony regarding this drawn-out controversial issue.


     The fingerprinting law was originally promoted quite specifically as a
desperately needed measure to protect children from sexual predators.
While this end is unquestionably laudable, we now need to know if the law
has in fact done anything of value toward that end.  We need to know
because it is increasingly clear that the law has come with a very high
price tag, not just monetarily but practically and morally as well.


     Now that the Chief of the Maine State Police has so conveniently--and
illegally--leaked to the public that 1324 school employees have so far been
discovered to have criminal records, it is even more important to know
exactly how many convicted pedophiles have been found among the highway
litterers, college marijuana experimenters,  conscientious resisters to the
draft, seat-belt forgetfuls, and other dire threats to society.   Don't be
misled: we do NOT need to know how many school employees have had their
certificates, licenses or approvals denied--the only data this proposed
bill offers to release--because we do NOT need to know--at such an
exorbitant price--if an employee once forged a check and is therefore
thought to be unfit to work in the central office.  We do NOT need to know
if someone is being dismissed for ANY cause at all other than a conviction
for sexual predation of children.  That is the sole reason this law was
pushed so hard in the first place, and it remains the only possible reason
for not repealing it now.


     All security comes at a price, and so had better be worth it.  This
proposed amendment, providing for the release of only a vague aggregate
number of dismissals, will not tell us if it has in fact been worth it.
The price, on the other hand, grows clearer with each passing month.  Never
mind the millions it is costing.  At last count, over 60 Maine teachers
have been or will soon be lost to Maine schools due to their refusal to
compromise their principles and submit to what they believe to be an
ineffective and ominously invasive law.  These faculty represent over 1200
years--let me repeat that: 1200 years--of teaching experience, also being
lost.  And they include among their number--please listen to this partial
list--a Maine Teacher of the Year Runner-Up, a Maine Music Educator of the
Year, a Maine Foreign Language Teacher of the Year, two Bowdoin College
Distinguished Educator Award recipients, a Maine Council for Social Studies
Award for Excellence recipient, a nominee for Maine Teacher of the Year in
Elementary Mathematics, a Maine Educators of the Gifted and Talented
Distinguished Service Award recipient...and there are more.


     What's going on here?  Aren't these exactly the teachers we need to
truly "save" the children?  Aren't these the sorts of teachers about whom
we brag when we claim to be Number One in the Nation in a variety of
educational categories?  And the truth is that there are many more like
them--but people far too modest to call any attention to themselves--who
are just quietly retiring early or leaving the field because of this law.


     And who will replace them?  What is it about being fingerprinted and
treated like a suspect that is going to attract bright, highly capable
students to staunch the looming teacher shortage crisis?  A week ago,
students from the Education School at Orono contacted me asking what they
could do to fight this law.


     So now we have a no-win situation.  This committee and the Legislature
can either provide for the legal release of background check data, or it
can leave the law as it is.  If it does the first, if it endorses this
amendment and allows the release of the aggregate figure, all it does is
retroactively excuse the Chief of State Police for breaking the law, and
further muddy the waters.  Undefined, the aggregate figure is like the
1324, a statistic that one can use to argue from in any number of different
ways.  For if it turns out that the Department of Education has denied
licenses to four individuals, we still do not know what kinds of crimes
were involved.  We also do not know--and this is equally important--if they
were denied following the statutory requirements for dismissal--a certain
offense within a certain time frame--or whether they are dismissals made at
the sole discretion of the Commissioner of Education.  To many of us, there
is something faintly Soviet about so much power residing--and cloaked in
confidentiality--in one official.


     But if you leave the law as it is, you let stand the Chief's smear,
not just of the 1324 school employees, but of the entire collective school
workforce.  Whether those convictions are serious or trivial, we will never
know.  But in the public mind, nothing is gained and much lost.
Accordingly, some have called for a complete breakdown of the entire 1324
convictions.  But I ask you, would you approve the making public of a
complete list of criminal convictions for all the doctors in Maine?  Or all
the lawyers?  Or Legislators?  It is patently unthinkable, as indeed it
ought to be.


     So sadly, I do not know what to recommend that you do.  We should
never have arrived at this point where every step only deepens the quagmire
and steepens the slope.  This is why I believe that the only true
resolution to the problem is to withdraw the whole fingerprinting program.
Then attack the problem of child abuse where it really exists.  But do it
sooner, rather than later, not just for the children, not just for all the
teachers whose services you continue to lose, but for all of us.


     Thank you again