REDISTRICTING PROGRESS

Three years after debating school closures as a reaction to declining statewide student population and a demand for property tax relief, two years after the first report on the unusually small and numerous school districts in Maine, nearly a year after consolidation studies by the State Board of Education, Maine Children’s Alliance and the Brookings Institution, and five months after the governor declared the proper number of school districts in Maine was 26, the Legislature has produced a plan to save money through school-district consolidation. Given the political pressure and the complexity of the issue, that’s not bad.

Nor is the work finished. Monday, Education Commissioner Sue Gendron showed a map of 62 new districts out of the current 290, basing the work on a proposal created by a bipartisan subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. As she was emphasizing that the map was tentative, legislative leaders were explaining their version of a plan to consolidate districts, also emphasizing that it was not a formal bill but the outline of one.

The Maine public has grown accustomed to legislators raising issues and talking about them for a decade or more before acting – or in the case of tax reform, a couple of decades. What is shocking about school-district consolidation is that it appears lawmakers have raised an issue they intend to decide this session. The plan remains contentious – there are honest doubts about how well the districts would work and how much money might be saved – but the decline of 30,000 students since the 1980s and increase in the number of school divisions requires a reorganization of a structure put in place a half century ago through the Sinclair Act.

The most striking aspect of Commissioner Gendron’s map is that it responds to complaints that the state was trying to homogenize districts by making all of them include at least 2,500 students, a number developed by the subcommittee. But a fourth of the districts are well under that figure and another fourth maintain existing SAD boundaries. The smallest district would include 1,509 students; the largest, 7,040.

The variety of scale and the more local districts described does not mean the plan lacks a demand for serious change. It clearly does, and districts clearly need and deserve time to consider the proposal. The move in the Legislature under the leadership plan, called Report A, is to set local votes for consolidation for January 2008, which is enough time if towns aggressively pursue the question (and, of course, not nearly enough time if they merely wish the question to go away).

From the start of this latest process in consolidation, supporters have pointed out that the real savings of reducing the number of districts (not schools) will come when the larger districts find more opportunities for collaboration of the sort that is taking place to a lesser degree now. That is likely true if existing local school boards are given roles that are considerably stronger than the advisory councils first proposed by the governor. Communities need strong representation so they remain engaged in their districts and feel a responsibility for their direction.

Through multiple hearings and multiple committees, members of both political parties have tried to balance the demands of sound education governance, local control and state cost-savings, working long hours on a difficult issue. They deserve credit for the thoughtful results they have produced.