Tax relief is buried in the bricks

What the hell are we going to do,” asks state Sen. Peter Mills of Cornville, rephrasing a question Maine has thought about, acted on and backed away from for a half century, “with these piles of brick and glass and mortar in the woods?” He means your local school.

Maine ranks 11th nationally in school operating costs (but 37th in teacher pay) and could rise to the top of the spending list because of the loss of students even if education costs remain unchanged, which they won’t. The state has some sensible incentives to inch schools toward consolidation, but they aren’t enough.

This is not an assault on the vital center of your town but an acknowledgement of its cost. It’s also something many school officials aren’t ready to consider. To move from denial that the question exists to anger, bargaining, depression and on to acceptance, they’ll need to grasp the relentless demographics of this age, the era of The End of Children. The Maine Department of Education has helpfully provided relevant charts on its Web site: www.maine.gov/education/enroll/enrlfacts.htm. Feel free to look; we’ll wait.

So now you know. Every county in Maine, north to south, is expected to lose students in the next couple of years, over the next five years and during the next decade. School-age populations for Piscataquis and Washington counties will drop by more than 25 percent; more than 20 percent in Aroostook and Franklin counties. The number of women in Maine of child-bearing age is at its lowest since 1895, and the ones here aren’t having many babies anyway.

In 1970, Maine had around 250,000 students; in 2000, it had 210,000; for 2010, the number is projected to be 180,000. Seventy thousand students – the equivalent of the largest city in Maine – will disappear over those 40 years, mostly from rural areas, which means mostly in places where the schools are already smallest.

But this is not a big schools vs. small schools issue. It is a cost issue, and the question asked by Sen. Mills is really a question of how much more taxpayers are willing to pay for the lack of efficiency in their schools. How much more are we paying now? Philip Trostel of the University of Maine and Catherine Reilly of the State Planning Office are just completing an extensive study on the topic and conclude the annual unrealized economies of scale in Maine schools is $271 million. Geography and other factors will keep Maine from ever capturing all of that, but, says Mr. Trostel, the potential savings “is much closer to $100 million than $1 million.”

Some towns experienced a frustrating example of missing out on savings with the newly signed LD 1, the tax-relief bill that surprised their residents who assumed a tax-relief bill would provide them with tax relief. But towns with rising valuations and a falling number of students saw considerably less, if any, relief. That’s not the fault of the formula but the cost of lots of small schools – and on a national scale, most schools in Maine are small.

Mr. Trostel is careful to say that smaller isn’t always worse or bigger always better, but he makes these observations: The average school district nationally in 2000-01 had 3,177 students; in Maine, the average was 734 and falling. Nationally, there was one full-time equivalent school district official or administrator for every 816 students; in Maine, there was one for every 393 students, resulting in 45 percent more school principals and 50 percent more guidance counselors than the national average. Maine has more teachers, more buildings, more of just about everything than average – except students.

Everyone loves their local pile of brick and glass and mortar; few want to decide what to do with it except to say they’ll take a newer pile to replace the old one. Jim Rier of the Department of Education and, more importantly, of Machias, part of a region suffering from the non-relief of taxes, says, “Any effort to look at reform is immediately seen as a mandate to consolidate. We should forget closing buildings and think about how we could work together more effectively.”

That is the right place to begin, and it may lead to viewing schools differently. Eventually, though, when the distrust has quieted, the talk will return to closing schools, which is painfully difficult for communities that depend on their vibrancy. But tax relief for them is unlikely without taking that step or one very much like it. Here’s where the state could help.

It could use its new school-efficiency funds, worth several million dollars, to pay towns not just a little for consolidation but a lot – treat this money the way the governor is treating the lottery proceeds by offering 10 years’ worth of savings up front as incentive. The savings with schools, after all, are also long term.

The state money shouldn’t go only to taxpayers but to teachers and staff in small schools that consolidate – they’ll take on more students and new demands; they should be paid well for it. (Disclosure: My wife is a teacher, but she works at a large school so wouldn’t benefit from any of this.) While cutting administration, guarantee that retirement or voluntary departures would reduce faculty size. Let taxpayers and school employees know what they are passing up now by not consolidating.

The new funding formula at the state level will control its half of school costs. The pressure for increased spending will shift to local taxpayers, as the results of LD 1 showed, and many communities and, therefore, their legislators, will hate it.

Before they start mistaking these laws for the demographics behind them, the state can make answering Sen. Mills’ question less painful while it makes the cost of not acting more apparent.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.