AUGUSTA — Democrats introduced their own proposal Wednesday for evaluating Maine’s public schools, even as state education officials announced follow-up plans for schools that got D’s and F’s in the state’s new A-to-F grading system.

Senate President Justin Alfond, D- Portland, described Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s grading system, unveiled last week, as simplistic and “a real disaster.”

“What you have is two contrasting plans,” said Alfond, one of 23 legislators who gathered to announce the plan. “The governor has run out of bad things to say about our schools so he came up with this. He wanted the shock effect and that’s what he got.”

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