Lawmakers race clock on school consolidation

AUGUSTA – With time running out and the final outcome still uncertain, the Legislature continues to struggle over how to craft a school administration consolidation plan that everyone can live with.

State lawmakers are under mounting pressure to come up with a solution because the proposal, and its expected $36.5 million in savings, is tied to the state budget. The Legislature needs to complete the budget within the next few weeks in order to have it printed and brought to a vote by the end of next month. And, because passage of the budget requires a two-thirds vote, the consolidation proposal must satisfy nearly every member of the Legislature.

“Negotiations, negotiations, negotiations” is how Rep. Emily Cain, D-Orono, summed up the ongoing process Tuesday. “The good news is it’s all friendly negotiations. We’re all trying to find the best solution. We all want to see what gets passed succeed.”

Cain served as the head of a four-member subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee that created a plan calling for a reduction of the state’s 290 school units to a maximum of 80 school districts with at least 2,500 students in each. Exceptions can be made for islands and some rural areas but the new districts must be in place by July 2008.

Cain said that House and Senate members were being pressured by a number of groups to extend that deadline another year. She said legislators from rural communities also were concerned about the loss of local control over school policy as recommended in the proposal. Many towns in some rural districts would lose their individual school boards and might be left without representatives to the larger board envisioned in the plan.

Under the plan, the new school districts would be governed by a regional school board with a set number of members. Individual communities would have the option to create individual advisory councils to work with the new board and their representatives, but those councils would not have voting authority over management of the district. Before the creation of a new board, communities would be required to establish Realignment Steering Committees to develop budgets and personnel policies during the transition from the existing management structure to the new school board.

Administrative consolidation is viewed as a way to shift money from central office functions back to the classroom. Combined, the state and local governments spend about $2 billion a year on education. With costs continuing to rise and enrollment continuing to decline, the need to find new ways to get the biggest bang for a shrinking buck is a foregone conclusion, Cain said.

“When you look at the numbers you can’t help but see that we’re on an unsustainable path,” she said. “If we don’t do something now we’re going to box ourselves into a corner. We can’t wait four or five years and then find ourselves in a position where we have to slash funding.”

Cain said the philosophical and political nature of the issue has made it difficult to reach a consensus on the best way to proceed. She said members recognize that taking a one-size-fits-all approach was unworkable and that flexibility would be the key to success. She said it has been nearly 50 years since school districts were created by the Sinclair Act and that changing policies that have been entrenched for that long was a difficult task to take on politically.

“We’re working in a political environment as much as a policy environment, and that’s a challenge. It’s especially challenging when you are trying to create substantial change,” Cain said. “We’re talking about schools, and they are the lifeblood of the community. The best we can do is have everybody step up, everybody playing and all the pieces moving simultaneously.”

Cain declined to predict when the Legislature would complete its deliberations, but she guessed that it probably would go down to the wire. She said there have been a lot of meetings on the issue and that many more would be needed to find a solution.

“It will come when the budget comes, but what happens between now and then is negotiations and a lot of hard work,” she said. “It’s hard work. It’s trying to find the best policy in an increasingly political environment. School consolidation is not a partisan issue; it’s a demographic issue and it’s a philosophy of education issue.”