[Local-Maine-Schools] April 4: Education Committee clears deck and picks vehicle

[Brian Hubbell]

Legislature's Education Committee work session on "regionalization" LDs
April 4, 2007
3:30-3:50PM

This turned out to be essentially a housekeeping session for the
Education Committee.  But some useful information did come out of the
meeting.

Not under consideration was LD 804: An Act To Ensure Responsible
Government Spending and Investment, (Senator Edmunds and co-sponsored
by our Senator Damon) as this apparently now is under the authority of
Appropriations instead of the Education Committee.

The only bill that received much discussion was Rep Woodbury's LD976
which simply seeks to provide a mechanism for using the last 5% in the
state's "ramp-up" to providing 55% of GPA as incentives to reward
consolidation.

The committee was most only interested to know if this could be used
within any of the other regionalization proposals.  The answer being,
of course, that it could make sense in proposals in which
consolidation is not required and that it would be unnecessary in
proposals in which consolidation is mandatory.

The committee voted "ought not to pass".

The committee then considered the remaining five LDs.

It turned out that all they were looking for from them was one
suitable title to use for their own alternate bill (apparently as yet
unbuilt) which could be presented to the full legislature in the event
that the Appropriations Committee's version bolted into the budget
bill goes down in the full legislature.

The LD they selected for this purpose will be Senator Mitchell's LD
464: An Act To Reform Public Education by Encouraging Regional
Approaches.

Voted "ought-not-to-pass" were:
LD 370, Resolve, To Reduce the Number of School Administrative Units
and Gain Administrative Efficiencies, Senator Turner
LD 835: An Act To Encourage School Administrative Units To Collaborate
with Other School Administrative Units, (Representative Silsby)
LD 853: An Act To Encourage Efficiency in School Administration, (Senator Mills)
LD 947: Resolve, To Prepare Students for Success in the Twenty-first
Century, (Senator Rotundo)

Given that all they were weighing in this deliberation was the LD
title itself, from this you have license to infer as much as you like
about their general intentions toward the body of their alternate
proposal.

So, from here on I think there will be only three LDs to track: the
main Appropriations budget bill, the Education Committee's vehicle of
LD 464, and the "Coalition" bill LD 804.

Now we look forward to seeing what the actual language will be in these LDs.