Penalties OK’d on noncomplying schools

BANGOR – The State Board of Education has given its vote of approval for the imposition of financial penalties on school units that fail to consolidate with neighboring districts.

The board reached its decision during a meeting held at the Challenger Learning Center on Wednesday. Board members recommended that districts that failed to comply with the consolidation law would find it harder to obtain state money for future construction projects.

The board approved docking school units that vote against consolidation 10 points from its 200-point rating schedule and to deny schools 10 percent of state building subsidy funds in the event a school construction project wins board approval.

Board chairman James Carignan of Harpswell said Saturday that support for the penalties was unanimous. He added that “we hope that this will be a rule that will not be used.”

Carignan said that under the policy, a community that wants to receive state endorsement for a construction project would start with an immediate 10-point disadvantage. Even if the nonconsolidating community managed to win board support for its building project, it also would be confronted from the start with a 10 percent loss of state construction funds.

“For a $40 million high school, that’s $4 million right off the top,” Carignan said. “That’s a 10 percent whack that’s not insignificant.”

Carignan said members of the eight-member state board voted unanimously to support restricting access to state construction money for school administrative units that are unwilling to consolidate.

The penalties would limit the ability of those units to make it onto the list of approved projects along with their access to state funds. They hoped that by implementing the proposal, communities would face an additional impetus for schools to consolidate, he said.

The consolidation law also required the Department of Education to implement financial penalties against schools that fail to reorganize. Districts that decide against consolidation would lose one-half of their state subsidy for administration costs and would see their percentage of state general purpose aid for overall programs permanently frozen at 2008 levels.

Carignan said the board was directed by the Legislature to impose penalties on districts that fail to consolidate and that members favored a two-pronged approach to penalize those units.

In approving consolidation as part of the state budget, the Legislature instructed the state board “to modify the rules establishing the rating process for school construction” to implement a penalty for nonconforming schools that will result in their receiving “less favorable consideration for approval and funding for school construction.”

The suggested reductions would not apply to any school units that are exempt from the consolidation process. That designation could include island schools, American Indian schools, schools deemed high performing, and schools that make a good-faith effort but are unable to find consolidation partners.

The penalties will have to win the approval of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee and the full Legislature before becoming law.