Identity lost as schools consolidate

The Boston Red Sox have enough money in their budget so they can make an occasional mistake – Edgar Renteria, J.D. Drew and Matt Clement come to mind – and still be on course to win a second World Series in four years.

Most Maine taxpayers don’t have the same level of disposable income, which is one reason the state is going forward with a plan to consolidate public school administrations.

Where that plan is leading seems just as inevitable as where the Red Sox are headed – at least based on their Game 1 rout of the Colorado Rockies. And that’s to the consolidation of schools themselves, something that would forever change the character of small-town northern, eastern and central Maine.

Think of your small town and those you pass through on your way to Bangor because a commercial consolidation of sorts over the years has concentrated the access to purchase many necessities in the larger cities.

The school remains the nexus of those small towns, and high school sports are no small ingredient in the emotions that link the people within those communities. Lose that link, and some of that town’s identity is lost, too.

Consolidation is not a new concept. The 1960s fostered the development of school administrative districts around the state that brought adjacent towns together in the spirit of more cost-efficient education.

But casualties of that period included the Monson Slaters, Brownville Junction Railroaders and numerous other small high schools that were engulfed by larger neighbors. Life has gone on, but the argument can be made that many of those towns haven’t been quite the same ever since.

Now a similar move is pending, and a similar impact may be felt as local control is replaced by regionalization to combat a shrinking school-age population.

One thing certain is that with fewer schools the interscholastic sports world will be condensed in a corresponding way, as a result the opportunities for high school student-athletes will be reduced.

Most bands or service clubs in a school aren’t limited by size, but only five teammates can be on the basketball court in a game at one time. So if 150 or so high schools become 80 or 90 over time, the number of varsity basketball players on the court at one time similarly is cut, particularly in areas where multiple small schools are merged into a few larger unions – think Washington and Aroostook counties, for example.

Perhaps the offshoot of this small chapter of the consolidation grand scheme will be to increase the influence and importance of private sports organizations such as Little League, AAU and ASA as they step in to in fill the role being vacated piecemeal by public school economies of scale.

On the surface it seems hard to believe that club sports might completely replace organized school sports one day, but that industry already has made serious inroads as a complementary piece of the youth sports equation.

And the reality is that change is drawing near, both in the overall framework of the public school system in Maine and in how that change affects the fabric of interscholastic sports in communities both large and small.

What form that latter change takes likely will be determined by the same issues that are driving the original administrative consolidation plan – money and local control.

Ernie Clark may be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or eclark@bangordailynews.net.