Best way to keep local school may be to close it

Aug. 31 marked the first deadline in the state-mandated process for consolidating Maine’s many school districts into larger, regional ones. Districts were to submit “letters of intent” to the Department of Education by that date identifying potential partners for district consolidation. While there were reports of resistance, predominantly in rural areas, the department reported widespread compliance with the new law, despite findings by many districts that consolidation would be a big and costly mistake.

Acquiescence by local districts in a process that ultimately results in their dissolution should come as no surprise. The new consolidation law contains brutal financial penalties for districts that fail to cooperate.

Local school boards, therefore, have few options before them. They can comply with the law, and give up local decision-making, oversight, and even ownership of their local schools, or they can go to voters and ask for a property tax hike to cover the loss of state funding that comes as a consequence of defying the law.

Or they could close their school, which, as unbelievable as it sounds, may be the best option available.

About a decade ago, the passage of a divisive school funding law in Vermont led one town there, Winhall, to undertake a novel act of civil disobedience. Fighting to hold on to its local school amid pressure to consolidate, the town replaced its public school with a community-created private one located in the same building. The town arranged to have its children tuitioned to the new private school under the state’s town tuitioning law, and students returned to school that fall hardly noticing that in their summer-long absence it had been converted from public to private.

What did Winhall gain from this? Independence. Like all private schools, the new Winhall school became free to run its own educational programs without the incessant state and federal meddling that so bedevils public schools. They also preserved local control, in the form of a community board of trustees, rather than join a much larger consolidated school district as Maine communities are being forced to do today.

Can it be done here? In a new report for Maine Heritage Policy Center, I suggest that it might just be possible.

Though there is no state law that lays out how to convert a public school to a private one, the process is pretty straightforward. Before closing a public school, the education of the students attending it must be provided for, and so the first step for interested communities would be to develop a private school that would meet with state approval for the tuitioning of students, as laid out in state law.

As one might imagine, the establishment of a private school is no small feat, but it is one that is done routinely in Maine, which has a rich tradition of independent schools and which is home to dozens of them. Indeed, working in cooperation with one of the state’s existing independent schools may be a good way for communities to get started in this process.

Once a new, approved school is created, the town then tuitions its students there, free of charge, and closes the public school. Because students are being sent to the new private school, the town can no longer show a need for its school building, and with the approval of voters it can be closed and sold or leased. Ideally, the building would then become home to the new private school.

It goes without saying that as bold a move as this requires enormous community support, and is likely to be opposed by the state, the teachers’ union, and other representatives of the status quo. While there are no doubt private schools in Maine that make their home in former public school buildings, the direct conversion of a public school to a private one has no known precedent in Maine.

So why bother? It may be the only way to preserve local control. Under the new consolidation law, the “regional school units” to be created will take possession of all schools within their jurisdiction. The only voice communities will have regarding their own local school is though their representatives on the new regional school board, if they have any.

The regional unit can’t take over a local school, though, if there is no public school there for them to take. Under this process, the former public school building would be in private hands and the town’s students would be attending a private school under the state’s tuitioning program, which is a right preserved under the new consolidation law even after the new regional units come to power.

The conversion of a public school to a private one may seem like an extreme step, but, as I write in the Maine Heritage Policy Center report on this idea, it is one made necessary by an ill-conceived and poorly written state law that was built on faulty assumptions and that sacrifices local control in order to realize largely fictional budgetary savings.

It is the law, however, and it leaves towns little choice. As ironic as it may seem, closing a small local school may be the only way to save it.

Stephen Bowen is the education policy analyst at the Maine Heritage Policy Center. His report can be found at www.mainepolicy.org.