“Studies? Gotta get away from studies. Gotta get away from delays. … Our people are demanding action,” the governor said last week as he opened his road show in Lewiston promoting a plan to dramatically reduce Maine’s school districts from 152 to 26.

Employing at least a cubit of hyperbole to drive a similar point to the Sun Journal editorial board, Education Commissioner Gendron added, “I can show you a stack of reports that’s almost two feet high in the department’s office that these commissions, task forces have for 25 years said we have too many school districts.”

Certainly drawing long knives on bureaucratic bloat plays well to seats of all prices at this season of legislative opera. And, if all those immeasurably arid monographs by economists have confirmed what we suspected all along, then who could begrudge the governor and commissioner their – um – testiness at the 19th century balkiness of the citizenry toward surrendering control of their schools to this Great Leap Forward?

But, perhaps, in these times when measurable standards are ascendant and no proposition is trusted unchaperoned without its rubric, we can spare one last moment for the sources.

Although it’s touted as both impetus and mandate for the governor’s plan, nowhere in the 146 pages of the Brookings Institution’s report, “Charting Maine’s Future,” is there a recommendation to geographically align the administration of Maine’s schools with the markets of the state’s 23 Wal-Mart stores.

Rather, what the report says is: “Maine possesses a globally known ‘brand’ built on images of livable communities.” To this it adds, “Crucial to this brand is the integrity of Maine’s distinctive towns and villages,” whose “local government appears rather frugal by comparison to national and rural-state norms.”

Nodding again toward this, with a substantial alarm about the deadening effects of regional sprawl, the report concludes, “All along we have admired the authenticity of the state’s human-scaled towns and villages and the town-meeting traditions that animate them,” and further acknowledges “global and national recognition that economic viability, ecological integrity, and community vitality frequently occur together and may ultimately depend on each other.”

The community referenced here is the root unit of democracy, and its vital signs are the ability to set policy and to assign resources. Take away those powers and community suddenly is elsewhere, replaced by apathy and alienation.

Recognizing this, the state’s own planning office has spent a good deal of effort researching what makes Maine’s communities vital. Rather than the 26 divisions the governor proposes, they count 69 communities across the state which serve as regional service centers.

Looking at a map of these, most people would recognize both the hearts and the boundaries of these locations as corresponding with their own identities of community. These are where you buy your groceries, where you attend public events, and where your children gather and know each other. These are the maps that show the beneficial reach of a bean supper, the boundaries of athletic rivalries, and the distance that a plumber will travel in answer to a midnight repair call.

These are the areas within which one is not surprised to see a principal at the movies, a bank manager reading aloud to first-graders, a fisherman soliciting for a high school bottle drive, your school superintendent pondering galvanized shackles at the hardware store, or your teacher answering the doorbell at Halloween.

In Maine these regions of community may have extensive history, but their current utility is neither antique nor outmoded. Emblematic of the so-called Maine brand, Maine communities are what inseparably support Maine’s schools and Maine’s future well-being – our kids, our towns, our schools, our futures. To divorce the governance of schools from our existing communities in favor of bureaucratic regional sprawl, as the governor proposes, would be a catastrophic leap in entirely the wrong direction.

… Ah, but what do all those studies say?

You could look it up. Statewide, it’s said we value reading comprehension.

Brian Hubbell is a member of the Bar Harbor school committee. Comprehensive information about Maine’s school consolidation proposals can be found at School Union 98’s Web page: mdischools.net.