BIGGER AND/OR BETTER

The push to regionalize schools in Maine has been for decades countered by the pull to protect the social and cultural lives of smaller schools and the towns they serve. The regionalizers are winning, very slowly, but the public may wonder whether they are better off for it.

Certainly there is an intuitive suggestion that if towns can reduce redundancies in their school operational budgets for buses, food service, record-keeping, etc., they can put more of their budgets toward the classroom.

Is that what actually happens? The Department of Education believes it is, but the evidence is scanty. As the state again gets serious about closing small schools and busing students farther from home, it should prepare a concise, persuasive report on how it knows potential efficiencies really are to be gained and where it is most likely to find them, documented with plenty of examples of schools that have been studied during earlier consolidations.

This is important for several reasons. School construction is expensive – if a $2 million addition to a regional school can help avoid the building of a new $10 million local school, that is $8 million Maine has to contribute to other projects on its long to-do list. The number of students is expected to fall significantly over the next dozen years. The decline of nearly 25,000 students represents about 11 percent of the state total, but the expected drop will not be evenly distributed and Maine is expected to see schools with 100 or fewer students now drop to only several dozen. And despite the drop in students, Maine still is expecting a teacher shortage, with nearly half of its current teachers being eligible for retirement within the decade – using teachers more effectively could be helped by having them in fewer school buildings.

All of these factors point broadly toward consolidation, but just as many others – the strength of a community, the learning environment in a small school, the lack of bureaucracy – point in the other direction. The state’s job is to go beyond talking generally about the benefits of consolidation and look at specific opportunities in specific districts. The final word would be up to a local board and local voters, but it is difficult for them to make informed choices when the information they have is anecdotal or general. And who knows – amid the countless education studies carried out each year in Maine, the state may already have all the information it needs to make its case and just needs to present it as a single comprehensive document.

Maine in the 1990s ranked among the very best states in the percentage of total education dollars it spent on actual teaching. No doubt there are further savings in this area, but they will be harder to come by than savings in a state that is significantly less efficient. So consolidating just for the sake of putting schools together certainly will not always yield greater efficiencies. Maine must consolidate carefully; a detailed blueprint from the state, in addition to the exhortations, would be helpful.