Let’s start the school work

Legislators have been horse-trading about the governor’s school consolidation proposal for five months. It now looks like the deal they’ve reached is: “Hey, we don’t need a horse! We’ll just pull the load the same way we always have.”

When the governor put his proposal forward, he knew that Maine’s taxpayers were tired of pulling the load. Yes, the governor’s proposal was a little dictatorial. Yes, it probably exaggerated the cost savings a little. Yes, it created districts of different sizes. But the governor is right: The load is too heavy, and taxpayers yoked to the cart are tired of pulling it. If the Legislature is miffed by the way the governor presented his proposal, they need to get over it and get to work enacting it.

In the meantime, of course, special interest groups have picked apart the governor’s proposal while continuing to ignore the problem. They talk about the closing of small schools, longer bus riding times, and the elimination of programs. None of these was in any bill the Legislature discussed. They talk about how efficient Maine’s school districts already are, ignoring the research that shows districts spending widely varying amounts on administration. They argue that regional boards will disenfranchise local citizens unless every town is represented, but we already elect both legislators and county commissioners with little attention to town boundaries. They talk about how the process will be “top down,” with the new regions designed in Augusta, even though every bill presented has assumed that local communities would find their own partners with the state playing only a limited role.

What they don’t talk about is how Maine’s per-pupil cost is $2,263 higher than the national average; that districts added 2,100 teachers and 250 administrators while the number of students fell by 16,000; or that our K-12 payroll is 25 percent higher than the national average even though our teacher pay ranks only 35th. They are not talking about how our student achievement is slipping relative to other states; that local control caused the state to spend $200 million building new classrooms in some communities, while neighboring communities had surplus space; or that K-12 education consumes 70 percent of local property taxes and $1 billion of the state’s General Fund, in large part because of our fragmented governance system.

Consolidation is not about closing schools, increasing class size, or picking new mascots for athletic teams. Those are local decisions. Consolidation is about shrinking the number of school boards and school committees to reduce expensive, duplicated overhead. It is about consolidating payroll and accounting offices, reducing office staffs and downsizing transportation, maintenance and school nutrition departments to more efficient sizes. It is even about routine things such as buying help-wanted ads, licensing software, and purchasing supplies less expensively.

Consolidation benefits everyone. OK, not everyone – those who are the redundancy and inefficiency in our fragmented local school districts will not benefit by consolidation – and it is these special interests who are the primary opponents of the governor’s essential proposal. It has been and will continue to be a mistake to expect 298 local districts to come up with their own curriculums and assessments. Defining what students need to know and measuring student achievement should be done at the state level. On the other hand, hiring staff, creating good school climate and involving parents, are best done at the school level. Students have the most to gain with less money spent on district operations.

We need to help Gov. Baldacci get a consolidated school system in place and then let the new local boards get to work. The Legislature needs to:

. Set the minimum district size at 2,500 students, 20 percent lower than the national average.

. Make consolidation mandatory but leave the choice of the new district boundaries to local communities as much as possible.

. Set a deadline of July 1, 2008, for the new districts to be up and running, getting them immediately involved in making the decisions that matter at the local level.

. Provide a common governance model, eliminating the five different types of school districts we now have.

. Require budget transparency through a common budget format.

. Require that the consolidated districts assume debts that come with school property.

Much has changed since 1957, the last time school districts were reorganized. Maine’s economy has changed dramatically. The number of students has fallen. The percentage of families with school-age children is at an all-time low. Our roads have improved to the point that student athletes routinely go farther for afternoon games than any school committee member will drive in a consolidated district.

Every business in Maine is more efficient now than it was 50 years ago thanks to technology – it is time to bring that same technology and the progress of the last 50 years to Maine’s school districts so that scarce taxpayer money can be used more efficiently to educate our children.

David Flanagan, former CEO of Central Maine Power Co., Rich Silkman of Competitive Energy, and Michael Moore, a former school superintendent, are members of the Maine Public Spending Research Group.