Frustration being my long suit, I would like to share some of it with those who are experiencing similar symptoms with the school district consolidation issue.

As a retired high school principal and educator for 38 years, I’ve watched the erosion of local control from beginning to end, from the Sinclair Act to the current day when it is no longer an option. I’ve watched the State Board of Education, the Department of Education, the Legislature and the Governor’s Office initiate a power grab that is unheard of in the annals of public education.

It began with the Maine Educational Assessment in the ’80’s and our school being told that it would never evolve into a state-mandated curriculum. Well, guess what? That was a gross miscalculation, followed by a host of others over the years, right up to the current one: that we have 152 superintendents. In reality, there are 118 full-time positions and a number of interim and part-time ones, some of whom may work only a day every week or two, on one of the islands or in small communities with one elementary school.

It would be a challenge to list the litany of state-mandated regulations that have evolved over the past 30 years, but they would certainly include the MEA, the Learning Results, Goals 2000, “highly qualified,” No Child Left Behind, local assessments and portfolios, college applications and, of course, the quite unremarkable Essential Programs and Services. This slick little funding device was to originally ensure that every kid could attain success through the Learning Results, but it has now evolved into a “cost containment” model so that the 55 percent level of funding education can be reached.

It’s now obvious to everyone, except the governor and the Legislature, that the best way to do this would be to cut the audacious spending practices of these two bodies of government. What has also become apparent is that the 55 percent level will be achieved by cutting funding for special education, transportation, administration and other critical elements of any school budget. It’s not the number of superintendents that is the issue here, it’s that the Baldacci administration wants to close our small, rural schools and eliminate teaching and administrative positions within these schools, so that the state coffers will be full enough for our learned, state educational leaders to honor their promises of the past.

If our small, rural school systems, which are primarily located in Aroostook, Washington and Piscataquis counties, choose not to comply with this consolidated nightmare, then the process of mandated blackmail begins, and it is nothing more than that. Down the road over the next two to three years our small communities will face a loss of subsidy, funding for administration, little or no consideration for potential building projects and the eventual uprooting of everything that we hold dear in our communities, primarily our children. We are told that our local input in the 2,500-pupil districts will be given primary consideration and that our kids will receive a better education in these larger units. I would ask the consolidation proponents if they truly think that we are numb enough to believe that.

This entire consolidation process is arrogant and displays a need for control that overshadows everything good about our small school systems. It has become the focal point for the Baldacci administration and the Legislature alike. If it has done nothing else, it has diverted public concern from the Department of Human Services debacle that saw $50 million of our tax money go down the tubes when DHS tried to revise a computer system on the cheap.

Couple that with the Department of Education throwing in the towel on the local assessment process and subsequently rendering years of effort by school systems across the state a financial failure of equal proportions, and we’re talking another $50 million going down those proverbial tubes. Would that help to fill the annual budget gap? But hey, it’s so much easier to hang a few superintendents out to dry, when no matter how you slice it, the real problem lies in Augusta.

I can remember the years when the state Department of Education would bust its butt to help a school system with its concerns as opposed to its current mission of riding shotgun over its own mandates. I worked in schools when it meant something to be a leader and to work with people of like mind, and to create programs and policies that were in line with the community and its expectations. Unfortunately, those days are gone, and those of us who participated in the simplicity and productivity of that era can only watch with considerable trepidation as this state-driven agenda continues to unfold.

Loren Ritchie resides in Greenville.