Governor John Baldacci’s educational reorganizational plan is the biggest power grab from local governments in my memory.

Here are some of the details that have been doled out to date, and just a couple of the hundreds of questions they inspire:

Statewide, we will be forced to go from more than 150 school districts to 26 – from many in Hancock County to one.

That means just one superintendent and one school board serving from Bucksport and Isle au Haut, Stonington and Bar Harbor, Steuben, Ellsworth, Mariaville and all 34 municipalities in between. Apparently they expect that many towns are going to use a modified version of the current SAD law to all come together as one big happy family and negotiate how we will all fund the super schools and how we will elect a board.

The state has issued a timeline that informs us that by this October we shall “elect new regional school boards who will select and hire a superintendent, create priorities for regional district.” In the meantime, our local boards will be invited to serve in an advisory capacity to facilitate the transition. (I, for one, will not facilitate the destruction of Mount Desert Island’s schools.)

But, assuming we do end up with one board, how do we get representatives from some of these communities together on a regular basis? Some would need to rent hotel rooms to attend meetings. And what would they control? Susan Gendron, Maine Commissioner of Education, asserts that all these towns need to come to agreement about how the resources (read “tax money”) will be raised and spent. And yet she also says that each town will not have to spend property tax revenue for educating children in other towns. I have to confess, that sort of logic is foreign to me. One and only one board will make decisions about education in the region.

Currently we need to fix the high school gymnasium, including the roof. Do you want a regional board making decisions about that? And who currently owns all the school buildings they apparently plan to commandeer? I thought that in our town we owned ours. Are we just supposed to voluntarily turn over the deed to this super board?

 This won’t result in school closings they claim. Well, maybe they won’t the first year or so, but do you honestly think that a board made of total strangers sitting in some other part of the county isn’t going to soon start to eye your small, very high quality K-8 school as financially unsustainable because classes are too small? If so, I have a nice old bridge on the Penobscot you might want to buy.

 The Department of Education’s (DOE’S) badly designed, wrongly named “essential programs and services” rubric indicates they believe we do not need a full-time principal at our elementary school, but they now propose to put a full-time principal in each school in Maine. Do you need a full-time principal on Islesford?

 The governor claims $250 million dollars in savings over three years by firing superintendents and staff. But the superintendents’ salaries only account for $15 million. And just how small do you think a sprawling central office will be? How many well paid assistants will the superintendent need to oversee dozens of schools? And who will pay for all the new principals?

 How many more employees will they eventually need in the state DOE? And by the way, we will have one teachers’ union contract for the entire district. (Unless the state is proposing to take that over too.) I guess that is going to be negotiated some time between now and full implementation in July 2008. They have not yet attempted to explain their numbers.

 This is a simple fact: The further away from home the tax money goes, the greater the percentage that will disappear into an administrative ether. Simplistic assurances to the contrary, the hands on the levers will all reside far from us. There will be little or no local accountability. If you think bigger, much bigger, is better than local control, I have a federal budget I would like to share with you.

 None of this even begins to ask questions about the most important topic of all: the education of our children. If you are a parent and think that you have a voice in your school and value being able to interact directly with the person who sets educational policy in your school; if your child has needs or problems, and you now know the person who might be able to see that s/he gets help; you can kiss all of that goodbye.

 Where will the educational leadership come from? Not from a superintendent whose enterprise is so big that an MBA is a more appropriate degree than a Ph.D. in education. In Mount Desert we do spend more than the state average per pupil, almost $2,000 more at the high school, and many more at my elementary school. That hurts, but you do tend to get what you pay for.

 Look at the recent SAT scores. On average, MDIHS students this past year had far higher scores than any other high school in the county and exceeded the state average in all areas by around 40 points. Look at our award-winning art department, our broad-based sports programs, our extensive lists of advanced placement classes.

 Each community in this county sets its own priorities and each community is different. I assert that MDI has nowhere to go but down by being forced into a regional district based illogically upon the geographic boundaries of the current regional vocational technical centers.

 This administration has repeatedly shown a penchant for sweeping, unrealistic edicts relating to educational practice and policy. Very often their demands on local schools are badly designed, hastily implemented, and arrogantly announced from on high. Then, when the poor quality of their decisions becomes manifest, they have repeatedly backtracked or altered course, resulting in untold lost time and money and frustration for administrators, teachers and students.

 High quality staff have previously told me they wish just once a policy would come from the DOE that had at its heart the best interest of our students.

 My concerns are not about protecting my job as a school board member. It is a huge commitment of volunteer time and goodness knows I could do something else. It is not about protecting any particular superintendent’s job, although I think we have a great one who works incredibly hard for our kids. Despite inferences to the contrary, superintendents are not potted plants. Ours works all day and most every evening too. It is all about what we believe to be necessary to provide the best education we can for our children.

Nothing the DOE has done to date even remotely suggests they will do a better job than local decision-makers can.

 There is little we do in any of our governments that is more important than providing education for the generations that will follow us. I ask you to inform yourself carefully about what this proposal contains and listen to your local educators and boards about what this might mean for our students. Come to our meetings. And make your voice heard to our representatives, on the editorial pages and in your town. Our state senator, Dennis Damon; and Representatives Ted Koffman and Hannah Pingree need to hear from you.

  Gail Marshall is a member of the Mount Desert School Board.

Discuss this article in the Mount Desert Islander forums. (0 posts)