Small schools, big challenges

For businesses and not-for-profit organizations, when the operating conditions undergo significant changes, the organization must adapt or lose ground. It is the same for schools. Many Maine schools are doing just that, modifying their organizational structures and operating procedures for changed circumstance, but some school officials seem unwilling or unable to recognize their situation.

Schools that successfully adapt are learning, as colleagues in the business and not-for-profit arenas have shown, that, while fiscal resources are critical, imagination and creativity are of at least equal value.

Recently, a superintendent of schools complained that the Essential Programs and Services (EPS) model for funding education is unfair to small schools. This theme echoes across the state, fundamentally misrepresenting reality. EPS has become the scapegoat for school systems that fail to adapt to such changing realities as the decline in student numbers and rising property valuations.

Noting that EPS calculates a 17-to-1 student-teacher ratio for elementary grades, the superintendent suggested that a class of 26 students would have two teachers, thus needing to fund more teachers than anticipated under EPS. A bigger school would have greater flexibility. It is important to note that Maine currently has a student-to-faculty ratio of approximately 11-to-1 – significantly higher than national norms and unsustainable over time.

Another challenge of a similar order for the small school would arise, the superintendent said, in the effort to provide administrators for schools of less than 305, the ratio on which the formula is based. Again, it should be noted that the national norms are much higher than either the current Maine norms or the ratios prescribed by EPS.

We all know that Maine has and will continue to have small elementary schools. When the distances are too great, as they are in rural areas or for islands, there is little choice; and we do not argue with the superintendent’s math. However, we want to point out that the complaint includes some assumptions about how to operate a school that need to be examined. Current practices are not fixed in stone, and they must be continually re-examined in relation to changing local contexts.

For example, many Maine schools operate successfully with mixed-grade classrooms. Other schools have somewhat larger classes with an educational technician to assist the teacher. In some cases, schools can benefit by moving all students at a given grade level to one location. Such choices call for individual, creative decisions to be made by each school administrative unit, based on its specific circumstances.

Under current conditions, school administrators need to look at all the options. Indeed, they must promote innovative and efficient ways to deliver an education suitable for 21st century challenges.

In the case of administrators, the situation is similar. Small schools need to consider less-than-full-time principals or principals serving more than one school. In some districts, depending on geography and other local conditions, schools can be combined.

There are many similar challenges requiring leadership that moves toward a new, efficient and student-effective way of operating our schools. The point in all of this is that small schools cannot reasonably expect to structure their operations the way larger schools do and schools of whatever size that are losing significant numbers of students cannot expect to operate exactly as they did when they were full.

Neither state nor local taxpayers can continue indefinitely funding schools that are unwilling to adapt their operating procedures to current circumstances. Maine already has one of the most costly school systems in the country, a result largely of small student-teacher ratios. Skilled administrators will seek new operating modes to fit changing circumstances.

We are hopeful that creative, imaginative responses to changing contexts will mark the future of pre-K-12 education in Maine, as it has so often in the past.

James Carignan is the chairman and Elinor Multer is a member of the State Board of Education.