ORONO – There’s too much duplication among Maine schools, the newly appointed commissioner of education said Thursday.

“We have incredible inefficiencies,” Commissioner Susan Gendron said. “With 286 school boards with 1,800 members and 151 superintendents, we’re duplicating many programs and services that channel dollars away from instruction.”

Schools should make a greater effort to share such things as transportation and food service, and then use the resulting savings to pay for instruction, Gendron told educators, businesspeople and University of Maine officials who gathered at the Black Bear Inn for the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting.

Her comments continued a theme that began in the administration of Gov. Angus King and is picking up more steam under Gov. John Baldacci.

Noting that schools across Maine are grappling with declining populations and reduced budgets, Gendron said consolidation and regionalization are certain to be the “most contentious issues” she’ll have to address.

Rather than “prescribing a solution,” she said, she hopes communities will use grants to hire neutral facilitators who will help review data, determine what’s in the best interests of students, compare regions’ strengths and weaknesses, and discuss how to offer education more efficiently, Gendron said.

The commissioner said she gave that message to East Millinocket residents at their town meeting Wednesday. The town has been contemplating consolidating schools and services with neighboring Millinocket as the area’s chief employer, Great Northern Paper, has laid off most of its workers.

Communities need to develop a strategic plan for education over the next 10 years and then “build a consensus around common goals and a common vision,” she said.

Consolidating programs and services is a way for people to test the water before asking “harder questions” about merging schools, Gendron said.

It may not make sense to operate two small elementary schools within five miles of each other, the former Windham school superintendent said. Many schools have fewer than 50 students, and some have less than five students in one class, she said.

Lots of research has been done on the effect of small schools, but little data has been amassed on what’s too small, according to Gendron.

Although consolidation and regionalization have been discussed before, most notably in 1957 when the Sinclair Act created school districts and school unions as cost-saving measures, the current foundering economy and declining enrollment will “leverage discussions in a different way than in the past,” she said.

Streamlining could result in a shifting of jobs. For example, superintendents could become “curriculum coordinators” who would help put the state’s Learning Results into place by aiding in teachers’ professional development and working on assessment systems.

The Learning Results take effect for the graduating class of 2007. “Many districts don’t have people to lead” the transition, she said.

Gendron said she has appointed a new deputy commissioner who will focus on the Learning Results.

Patrick Phillips, assistant superintendent in SAD 28 (Camden area), will take on the new position April 30. He will address teachers’ concerns around having enough time and resources to put the Learning Results into place, Gendron said.