Long-term education

The most successful education fight in Augusta this year wasn’t the improvements to the funding formula and it certainly wasn’t the 5 percent increase in funding. It was the coming together of teachers, students, parents and school administrators from around Maine to demand that state government keep its promise on education. Though this group didn’t get all the money it deserved, it sure got heard.

And that counts as a victory for now. Getting Augusta to pay attention takes a tremendous effort. Getting it to change its mind can take years. Rural schools have the attention of lawmakers; some – not enough – have come to appreciate the effects of the disparities in funding. With lawmakers no longer under the pressure of pending legislation, now is the time to expand their educations on funding.

Rural schools might take the campaign for research and development as a model. Everyone wanted to take credit this session for coming up with the idea of funding R&D, but investing in the university system this way was not immediately popular with legislators. Instead, it began with a group of determined UMaine professors, the people on the front line of the problem, who campaigned for it across the state, at the State House and at every Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce or town office that would have them. They knew the investment was the right thing to do for higher education and for economic development. They honed their arguments and stuck with it until they were heard. The first cash infusion they got a couple of years ago was $400,000; this session R&D was budgeted for $11 million, plus a sizable bond.

Adequate school funding is the same sort of multi-year fight, and it is just getting under way. It will take state government as least as long to figure out the importance of fair GPA as it did to discover R&D. That’s why the voices from Maine schools will be so critical. Lawmakers need to hear the day-to-day difficulties of what it means when students do without. From the school that cannot afford lab equipment to the class with so many students that cannot stretch its textbooks far enough to share one between every two students, to the lack of tutors, lack of art and music programs, the lack of hope for most students to achieve academically beyond high school — rural Maine will not persuade Augusta to act until it understands these conditions.

The test for the groups that came together this session to demand fair funding is that they remain together until they achieve their goal. The end of the session does not mark the end of their chance, but the beginning of another opportunity to make their case.