AUGUSTA – Concerned that Maine’s Learning Results might be abandoned, a lawmaker suggested Thursday that the tie-in with state funding be eliminated.

Calling it an “alternative perspective,” Rep. Glenn Cummings, D-Portland, said legislators should consider consistently increasing the percentage of public funding for kindergarten through grade 12 instead of trying to meet a 50 percent funding mandate now in legislation.

The incremental increases would still send a message that the Legislature is making “a good faith effort” to ensure that the Learning Results are carried out, said Cummings, co-chair of the Education Committee, during a meeting with the Department of Education on Thursday.

Cummings, who was on the Education Committee last year when the funding method for the Learning Results was approved, said that in light of the recent talk about tax reform he has been scrutinizing the numbers “much more carefully.”

Voters Tuesday failed to give a majority to either Question 1A or 1B, each of which promised some property tax relief by increasing the state’s share of funding for local education to 55 percent.

“I thought we could get there much more easily,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we can’t do it, [but] now I know it’s no slam dunk that we’ll get that kind of money.”

In September, Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron recommended extending the Learning Results timeline for one year until the state is better prepared to come up with 50 percent of the cost of putting the academic standards in place.

Cummings said Thursday that delaying the Learning Results until adequate funding is in place could inadvertently give schools the impression that the state is “ambivalent” about academic standards.

“We need to be careful not to get in a box that implies that the Learning Results will be abandoned if we don’t hit that [50 percent] mark,” he said. “The Learning Results are worthy of doing and are very important to our kids. If we make an absolute line in the sand around 50 percent we could undermine their implementation.”

If the state doesn’t come up with the required 50 percent, some people who have been “resistant” to the idea of Learning Results may think they have an “escape clause,” he said.

Some schools haven’t made as much headway as others in aligning their curriculum with the Learning Results and developing local assessments to gauge student progress on the academic standards.

But Cummings suggested creating a waiver system that would allow schools to apply for an extra year. “It seems like a good compromise for those [schools] which feel they need more time versus those who feel they’re ready to go,” he said.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about Cummings’ ideas. Rep. Mary Ellen Ledwin, R-Holden, said abandoning the state requirement to fund 50 percent of education would mean the Learning Results would become an unfunded mandate.

Rep. Thomas Murphy, R-Kennebunk, said losing the link with state funding would cause the public to be “skeptical about anything that ever comes before us in the future.” People would “snicker,” figuring the Legislature “just can’t keep a promise,” he said.

But Sen. Michael Brennan, D-Portland, called the 50 percent level “arbitrary” and said, “There’s no correlation between getting there and local districts being able to carry out the Learning Results.”

Nor did the Department of Education embrace the concept. The commissioner believes that educational reform “has to be a shared responsibility of state and local officials …” Deputy Commissioner Patrick Phillips said after the meeting.

“To remove the link between the statewide effort to move our students to higher standards and the state’s responsibility to be an active partner in the effort runs the risk of sending a very bad message to teachers, administrators, and parents about the seriousness of our belief in reform,” Phillips said.

The idea of a waiver system didn’t fare any better. “If the state is not able to meet its obligations, it should be the state that takes responsibility for addressing the problem, not implying through a waiver that something the local district has done is at fault,” Phillips said.

Rob Walker, president of the Maine Education Association, the state teachers union, said it was “unrealistic to say the [50 percent funding mandate and the Learning Results] aren’t inextricably linked.”

Just as the federal education law, No Child Left Behind, requires adequate federal funding, the Learning Results require sufficient state money, he said.

Superintendents also were of different minds. Denny Gallaudet, the Richmond superintendent, said, “We shouldn’t tie Learning Results for kids to the Legislature’s ability to come up with 50 percent funding.”

But Terry Despres, the superintendent in SAD 36 (Livermore Falls) said taking away the funding link would result in people “treating it as, here we go again, here’s another state mandate that the state is shoving onto property taxpayers.”

The Education Committee will vote on the proposal after the Legislature returns for its next session in January.