📒 A new Mills ad responds to criticism she is taking on education.
◉ The governor's new ad is notable for how it is tailored to respond to Republican attacks on videos that appeared on a state website that provided optional lessons to parents and teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic, including one that called several terms examples of "covert racism."
◉ Mills has been talking often about how she is the first governor to raise basic K-12 education funding to a statutory 55 percent threshold, but that does not appear here. The ad is vaguer, saying she has "kept politics out of classrooms" and protected "Maine's long tradition of local control."
◉ It is a sign that the governor sees this subject as a potential vulnerability. Her administration removed a lesson explaining gender identity to kindergarten students in May, but it recently stood by the lesson containing the "covert racism" reference. Maine's education department said it will "continue to empower teachers, parents and elected school boards to make their own decisions about public education." |
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