Fastidious and faithful readers of the BDN may have noticed a rare occurrence recently: two articles on different topics about a tiny school that sits as far Down East as you can go. One article (May 15) praises teacher David Finlay who won the National Agriculture Outstanding Teacher Award. He won the Maine Agricultural Teacher of the Year Award last year. Finlay earned a plaque from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He is quoted as saying that he’s incredibly honored and adds, “Hopefully, it will bring recognition for everything being done in Lubec.”

This brings me to the second news item (May 1), which has a much different tone: “Town Struggles To Compensate For Subsidy Loss.” Rather than celebrate, this article laments. For over 100 years the town of Lubec has taught its own kids, but common sense is on the verge of doom. The attitude in town is that the end is coming, even if they scrape by for another year.

In 2007 Lubec High School received a Best High School Award from U.S. News & World Report. Only 13 schools in the state were so honored. Also in 2007, a Lubec art teacher won a Maine Arts Teaching Fellowship, one of only eight granted.

I could go on listing the praises but you get the flow of the tide. Lubec boasts a gem that should be upheld by our leaders as an ideal of education. Instead, the pencil pushers in Augusta are destroying this precious exemplar by the sea, a beautiful school in a natural, remote area that fosters Finlay’s aquaculture program and a walking trail that meanders through a coastal ecosystem down to the beach.

The politicians have made cataclysmic slashes in funding, obeying a cost-benefit formula that ridiculously burdens the small-town treasury. Lubec is not the only rural school being squeezed by this tyrannical and insensitive equation.

Local kids are looking at long bus rides, lack of pride and enduring sorrow. They are being torn out of their communities, coerced into becoming immigrants in their own counties. If you think I am exaggerating, I wish you could have been at a recent Lubec school board meeting, where students rose en masse to plead for their dying school. It was heart wrenching. I dare any legislator to look the kids in the eye and explain.

The strangling of Lubec school and others like it exemplifies bureaucracy in a ditch. It fleshes out the metaphor of a central octopus, tentacles that decree right and wrong in terms of dollars, never with ingenuity or faith in the power of doing what’s right.

Highlighting their myopia, legislators seem baffled on how to fix their equation so that it isn’t brutal and unethical. Let me help by supplying four possibilities, all of which are basic.

First, the state should create a jury panel for evaluating pleas from the schools. We have juries because formulas alone can’t render justice. Each community is unique and deserves a hearing.

Second, the state should send representatives out to any school they’ve crippled. The purpose would be to listen and deliberate, breaking the all-mighty grip of generic math.

Third, the infamous equation could be modified. It’s not that hard. The basic idea is that if property taxes are not going to cover the school’s existence and the school merits existence, funds are kicked in. End of story. Being fair just takes a little extra effort.

Fourth, eliminate top-heavy administration, but do it without devastating the towns. The muddled, vacillating consolidation plan spit out last year could help with this – but only with safeguards against wanton harm. In other words, pass a Bill of Rights for schools.

Although my words ring of a jeremiad, I feel a harsh tone is warranted. Maine stands at a crossroads. We either tear our remote communities apart, relegating their children to immigrant status, or affirm our commitment to small, local and beautiful – three things that make this state attractive to outsiders. If you crush seeds of knowledge in small schools, which teem with innovation, their beautiful insights are never going to spread. When flowers of virtue wither due to neglect, they leave a bleak landscape of mediocrity and defeatism.

Don’t let it happen here.

Chris Crittenden lives in Lubec and teaches ethics at the University of Maine at Machias.