Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron explained how the governor’s plan to consolidate all the state’s school districts into 26 would work Monday, saying individual cities and towns would have a voice through grassroots advisory committees, but they would not have the option of refusing to participate.

The 26 school districts essentially would mirror the regional vocational education schools already serving the state.

There would be administrative districts centered in Madawaska, Caribou, Presque Isle, Houlton, Calais, Machias, Ellsworth, Bangor, Lincoln, Dexter, Belfast, Rockland, Skowhegan, Waterville, Augusta, Bath, Brunswick, Lewiston, Farmington, Rumford, Oxford, Bridgton, Portland, Westbrook, Biddeford and Sanford.

Headquartered in Ellsworth, the proposed District 7 would include the towns of Swans Island, Frenchboro, Tremont, Southwest Harbor, Mount Desert, Bar Harbor, Cranberry Isles, Prospect, Verona, Bucksport, Orland, Otis, Mariaville, Waltham, Eastbrook, Ellsworth, Franklin, Sullivan, Gouldsboro, Steuben, Winter Harbor, Hancock, Surry, Blue Hill, Trenton, Lamoine, Penobscot, Castine, Brooksville, Sedgwick, Brooklin, Deer Isle, Isle Au Haut as well as Stonington.

There also is a plan to increase class size in the state’s middle and high schools to 17, which would lead to the elimination of 600 teaching positions for an estimated savings of $25 million over two years. Those posts would be cut largely through freezing vacancies, particularly as older teachers retire, the administration says.

Gov. Baldacci’s dramatic proposal to reduce the current number of school districts and local school committees from 290 to 26 by July of 2008 left some school administrators reeling over the weekend.

“Clearly they’re concerned about the timeline,” said Ms. Gendron, with administrators questioning, “Is it too aggressive?”

Ms. Gendron said she’s been asked why more consensus-building was not done before the plan was announced last week as part of the governor’s budget. She said a number of reports came out last year, and they all said the same thing – reduce administrative costs and improve student learning.

Elinor Goldberg of the Maine Children’s Alliance, whose organization authored one of those reports and recommended 26 planning alliances so locals could work on creating new districts, said the governor’s proposal is “a wonderful idea.”

“We did our plan because we want to get to that point,” she said of the regional districts. “I just think there needs to be a voluntary component. That’s what’s going to happen in the committee process. The Legislature has to have 2 cents in this.”

Under the governor’s plan, an estimated $240 million will be saved at the state and local level over three years to reduce taxes and allow money to be reinvested in classroom learning. Fewer districts also will allow the state to get all schools working toward the same student achievement goals.

“Maine has some of the toughest standards in the country,” Ms. Gendron said, “but what we see is there’s varied interpretation about what those standards are.”

The state’s 152 superintendents, some of whom already oversee more than one district, have the most to lose personally. All their jobs would go away and 26 superintendents would be hired to run the consolidated districts. Those districts would range in student enrollment from 1,824 in Calais and 2,546 in Madawaska to 17,728 in Sanford and 19,996 in Portland.

“The local schools stay in place and the local principals stay in place,” said Ms. Gendron. It’s the administration to support 152 central offices that would go away.

Ms. Gendron did admit the new regional school boards, which would consist of between 5 and 15 members, could vote to close schools. But cities and towns have the option under law to hold a referendum to keep their schools open, if they are willing to pick up the extra costs.

Cities and towns could not vote, however, to keep their own school districts. If Gov. Baldacci’s proposal makes it through the Legislature, community school districts will cease to exist under law as of July 2008, Ms. Gendron said.

Each district will negotiate its own districtwide teachers’ contract and assume responsibility for state-subsidized debt for new schools or renovations. In those cases where local districts already have opted to pay for new schools on their own and without state help – as is the case in Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor and Tremont, for example – that debt will remain the responsibility of that town, not the new district, Ms. Gendron said.

The administration will use state aid for K-12 education – projected to be at $1 billion or 55 percent of the cost by 2009 – distributed under the essential programs and services funding model to influence the direction of the new regional districts.

If the Legislature amends the proposal and opts for a greater number of districts, for example, Ms. Gendron said she would recommend districts still only get the same amount for administration as recommended in the governor’s plan – $186 per student versus the current $346.

The 26 regional school boards could vote to spend more than recommended under the state funding formula, as many of the wealthier districts do now, but it would require a vote of the member cities and towns, whose citizens will have to pay the bill.

The amount each community pays to support its school district would be determined the way it is now, but the difference is they would not have local control through their own school board.

Ms. Gendron said that is where the local advisory boards come into play, made up of parents and other local citizens, who would talk to the regional school board, but have no legal authority.

“The link with the advisory board is absolutely essential,” she said.

The state has $1.8 million in the education budget to hire facilitators this year to help districts form a region.

“We will have a team of individuals ready to roll on July 1 should the Legislature implement the governor’s proposal,” Ms. Gendron said, and the governor is “adamant about moving forward.”

The timeline calls for 26 regional school boards to be elected in October of 2007 and they would then hire their respective superintendents. Local school districts would be dissolved and the new regional districts empowered by July of 2008.

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