School reform risks loss of community to region

Few issues will have as great an impact on the future economic and cultural prosperity of Maine than the question of regionalization of the state’s school districts.

What is at stake is not only the education of our students, but the life of our communities for whom local schools are very close to the heart.

The achievements of the town of Hermon are a case in point, where, as Gov. Baldacci has suggested, through a local community initiative and an innovative use of computer technology, the schools have become an economic and cultural engine that serves businesses, public and private institutions, and provides free Internet connection and access to every resident in the town.

Hermon has become a creative community because of its schools and provides a model for the rest of Maine. Hermon offers a model of what a creative community can do. It also does so in a way that provides significant savings. As a result, education does more for everyone in the community – the community does more for the community – and it costs less. Would such creativity and innovation and cost-savings survive regionalization?

According to the Bangor Daily News, a majority of Maine citizens support less costly government at all levels including school administration. A majority of teachers and administrators in Maine schools also believe that some regionalization is required. The question is what kind of regionalization. Will it disempower local communities as authority flows to regional bureaucracies and through those bureaucracies to the Department of Education in Augusta? Or will regionalization lead to regions of empowered communities collaborating innovatively and creatively in networks of local schools?

Either is possible and the choice will be crucial for all of us. Neither of us is an expert on school administration and reorganization, but certain guiding principles for any regionalization seem clear because any regionalization should promote community development in ways that give Maine citizens the power and authority to shape their future. Each region should be a collaborative network of local schools and communities. Where possible authority should flow from Augusta to those regions. Different regions should have considerable flexibility to design their networks in ways that suit the diverse character of different regions.

For this diversity to be respected, communities of comparable size should be linked together. Towns should not be lost in school districts that are dominated by urban centers like Bangor, Lewiston or Portland. Fiscal management should be so designed that individual communities can fund the kinds of innovation in which Hermon and other towns have taken the lead, and they need to be able to innovate without asking permission from the region as a whole or the electorate of the region as a whole. The Department of Education’s work should never be defined by hierarchical bureaucratic management but by facilitation among the regions and, where appropriate, within the regions.

We often think of ways to balance the private and public sectors in our society, but the balance between these sectors can only be provided by communities of active citizens whose interests both the private and public sectors exist to serve.

If regionalization leads to a kind of centralization that only gives more authority to Augusta through a regional bureaucracy, regionalization is a bad idea that should be opposed. If regionalization leads to networks of empowered communities that foster economic and cultural prosperity for the people of Maine, then regionalization can be a good idea that should be supported because the money saved (money that needs to be saved) will also be well-spent.

Yvon Labbe is director of the Franco-American Centre at the University of Maine, where Tony Brinkley is the faculty associate.