AUGUSTA – School administrators and board members were advised Friday that innovation, imagination and cooperation will be needed if their schools and students are to excel in an era of tightening budgets and changing needs.

That message was delivered by Gov. John Baldacci and Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron when they addressed the fall conference of the Maine School Management Association at the Augusta Civic Center.

While both speakers praised the educators for their efforts to improve Maine schools, they emphasized that more needed to be done. Both said the move to a “knowledge-based economy” has changed the way schools approach learning.

They also warned that the proposed tax cap would devastate schools if approved by Maine voters Nov. 2. Both urged the more than 300 attending the conference to work to defeat the so-called Palesky measure. The proposal would cap real estate at 1 percent of its appraised worth.

Baldacci said the tax cap would drain an estimated $500 million from local budgets. He said when California passed a similar proposal 20 years ago it was among the state leaders in education and business climate. California now ranks near the bottom in both categories, far behind Maine, he said.

The governor said Maine ranks second in the country in science learning, ninth in reading and eighth in mathematics. He said it required a major investment to reach those levels, and to slide backward because of a loss of investment would be a tragedy.

“If we are going to be a knowledge-based economy, you are going to have to do more for the future,” Baldacci told the educators. “The challenge in Maine is to find economic opportunities here rather than have to go elsewhere.”

Baldacci described the tax cap as a “meat ax” approach. While he acknowledged that “our tax burden is high,” instituting a tax cap is not the answer, he said.

“It is about the economy and jobs and opportunity that people are going to schools for,” he said. He said the long-term implications of the tax cap were “going to get made up on the future of the state. It’s going to get made up on our sons’ and daughters’ ability to hang out their shingles.”

Baldacci said recent steps to improve access to community colleges have proved successful. He said enrollments have increased 38 percent in the past year. He said the proposed prekindergarten through grade 16 template aimed at guiding all secondary students toward college was being reviewed, and a proposal would be brought forward soon. He said it will cost money to improve education but the results would be worth it.

“We’re pretty pleased that we’ll have a plan to move forward in terms of higher education,” said Baldacci. “We need to sacrifice, roll up our sleeves and work together in the future. We’re going to get it done. It probably won’t be pretty, but it’s going to get done.”

Gendron said it was critical to transform the programs and culture of the schools to ensure that students “have the skills to be ready for postsecondary education.” She said the need to succeed in a knowledge-based economy would put “a lot more pressure” on young people to move to community college or university upon graduation.

To prepare for that, Gendron suggested that it was time to trade the old model of education for a more modern structure. She recalled a 1994 federal study titled “Prisoners of Time” that found fault with the lock-step approach to teaching children around a set time schedule based on age and accomplishment. She said researchers have determined that reaching pupils when they are young was crucial to their educational development in later years.

“The earlier that we provide intervention for our children, the more likely we will have success in our schools,” said Gendron.

She also noted that because the Learning Results programs require that all students be prepared for college beginning with the high school Class of 2008, schools might have to consider five-year programs for certain students.

The opposite also could be true with certain students who show promise early in their high school years. Gendron said those students might be better prepared by shifting to college-level courses through distance learning or by crossing community or district lines to schools that offer those courses.

“We can transform our schools but it’s going to take your leadership to do that,” Gendron told the gathering. “I’m hoping that you will be bold, that you will be visionary, and not be a prisoner of time.”