MOVE ON DISTRICT REFORM

Unless the Legislature’s Education Committee quickly dedicates itself to completing a fair and educationally sound means to consolidate school districts, it will be the rightful target of angry property taxpayers next election. For the long-term good of schools and the state’s tax burden, lawmakers should agree that Maine’s bureaucracy-heavy school districts should be trimmed and that the Legislature should emerge this session with a plan to accomplish it.

By now, Maine is well aware that its district-level administration here oversees far fewer students than the national average, and that as both Maine’s school population and its national test results continue to fall, the status quo will become less and less acceptable. Last month, Gov. John Baldacci laid out a plan that would reduce the number of district administrators, raise the salaries of teachers across the state and promote greater cooperation among schools. School boards panned it.

They did so in the name of local control, and while that is a legitimate concern, the Baldacci plan responds to it. The plan does so by increasing the number of principals so that every school would have one, thereby giving parents someone to talk to directly about school policies, and it would create local advisory boards to include each town.

That’s not to say the governor’s plan is ideal. The authority of those local boards should be strengthened. The administration claims its three-year savings of $241 million is conservative, though experience suggests that, short-term, mergers don’t achieve as much savings as predicted. But the value of the governor’s plan is that it begins to answer a pressing and fundamental question for Maine: What education structure would most effectively serve students at the least cost?

The answer certainly is not the current 290 districts and 152 superintendents, and probably is not the governor’s 26 districts. But it very likely includes the broad sharing of resources, coordinated special services and bus dispatch and more efficient use of staffing and programs, as described by the governor. That means regions based roughly on student-population numbers that reflect efficient school units.

Education committee members recently outlined their own goals for reform, and there is broad overlap in recognizing that consolidation should occur and cooperation for larger districts should be encouraged. But those desires have yet to equal the data presented in 2005 by UMaine economist Philip Trostel and Catherine Reilly, now the state economist. While recognizing the largest savings opportunities are in the smallest districts, they found “the estimated minimum-cost enrollment per grade is 574.3 students in districts with high schools … and 149.4 students in districts without high schools. In each category, Maine has just one school district near these cost-minimizing enrollment levels.”

The committee could look at several proposals before it that form regional districts, consider the regions outlined by the governor or draw up its own regions. If the committee wants more local input, it could invite additional school-board members to outline their concerns.

The only choice the committee must not make is to merely appoint commissions to talk this topic to death. Too much is at stake for that.