You’ve got to hand it to Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron. She’s a graduate of the Ronald Reagan Optimistic Prospecting School. She honestly believes she can find educational excellence in the cost shifting mandated under the misguided school reorganization law foisted upon us by our one-party state government.

Make no mistake: all this punitive piece of legislation does is shift costs in a variety of ways. It certainly does not address the critical concern of local property taxes, except in a negative way. It certainly does not address the issue of improving education, unless you buy the argument that increasing teacher salaries will automatically enhance the learning process for Maine’s school kids.

Let’s review some of the cost shifting implicit in the law. By the Department of Education’s (DOE) own template analysis, the basic impact on property taxes in municipalities in every potential new regional school unit (RSU) is mill rate equalization for all members. Now equalization is a fine concept in theory, but in actual practice, it can and will lead to dramatic increases and decreases in local property taxes for the new RSU member municipalities. Shifts of hundreds of thousands of local tax dollars are not exactly a receipt for a friendly merger.

Apparently some legislators and DOE insiders have recently recognized this fairly obvious flaw in the law. Likely, there will be many one-time RSU-by-RSU fixes proposed in the upcoming legislative session in an attempt to placate local taxpayers. Rest assured that these fixes won’t stand the test of time. Rather, these patch jobs will be clumsy efforts subject to the whims of property valuation fluctuations or population movements or some other “creative” variable every year. Don’t like your cost-sharing formula? Run to the Legislature for relief, and be prepared to run back every year.

Another cost shift that Gendron brushes off with little more than a nod and a wink at good will among the parties is the thorny subject of meshing teacher salary scales. There are differences of, in many cases, several thousands of dollars between teachers on the same pay step of the tired old experience-based salary scales of potential merger partners. Which local teachers union is prepared to negotiate smaller or no increases for its members to equalize salaries for all? The answer is obvious. Falling on one’s sword went out of fashion years ago.

Of course, we are led to believe that shifting from what is apparently, by the law and DOE reckoning, a less critical cost area like special education will help fill the salary gap. Last time I looked, most special education dollars are spent on teachers and educational technicians, so let’s assume some of those positions must disappear. Who wants to share that piece of news with the parents and attorneys of children with special needs?

Other apparently less critical spending areas are system administration, plant operation, maintenance and transportation. (By the way, for all taxpayers and citizens of large stand-alone school systems who think that regionalization doesn’t apply to them, think again when it comes to these areas and to the school budget approval process.) System administration costs currently represent something less that 4 percent of total spending, but we are told that the percentage should be about 2 percent, despite the fact that only a handful of systems statewide come close to this lower recommended level. To keep the current overall level of system administrative costs in perspective, be aware that total educational costs have escalated on an annual basis at a rate in excess of 4 percent, or in other words, at a pace that exceeds total annual system administrative costs. Total per student spending now approximates $10,000 per year, and system administrative costs average about $400 per student. Suppose you are in the market for a $10,000 vehicle and you are told that for a discount of $200 you can give up the brakes and the steering wheel? What’s your preference?

Currently, the state does not fund, as it once did, the full cost of approved school bus purchases. It seems that at some point the local share of bus purchases might well go up as part of the plan to reduce the state share of transportation costs.

The best “money-saving” idea the state has come up with in the transportation arena is an expensive computerized routing system for buses. Perhaps this system will be persuasive in relocating rural families who live their definition of the good life at the terminus of a dead-end road many miles from the local school – or maybe it won’t be.

In the area of operation and maintenance, there are, by some estimates, on the order of $2 billion in required school infrastructure improvements statewide. We’re talking here about dealing with leaky roofs, old boilers, asbestos removal, substandard ventilation and other basic needs. Several years ago, the state began addressing these needs through its Revolving Renovation Fund program. That program is apparently about tapped out, while the needs increase. I guess those building upgrades will continue to take a back seat as money gets shifted to more critical areas. As an alternative, local bond issues with corresponding local tax increases will be required.

If shifting is your cup of tea, you’ll enjoy the new brew of school regionalization.

Charlie Anderson lives in Stockholm.