[Local-Maine-Schools] Report on meeting with Bangor Daily News editorial board

[Brian Hubbell]

It's been rather a long day, but I need to report to you -- if only
briefly -- that this afternoon Dick Gould, Sandra McArthur, Alan
Smith, John Marsh, Paul Stearns and I met with Todd Benoit and Susan
Young, the editorial board of the Bangor Daily News.

Wish I could report that it was a productive discussion.  But, while
the editorial board obliged us generously with a full 40 minutes or so
of their time, from our side they appeared to have already reached
their conclusions and expected only one thing from our meeting -- to
be able to say that they'd listened to us and heard nothing new.

Indeed, even forgiving the traditional firewall between a newspaper's
news and editorial departments, they seemed remarkably incurious about
any of the detailed consequences of consolidation or the relationship
between cost and function in any of the varied districts represented:
Greenville, Guilford, Madison, and Mount Desert -- all of which I
think would make for fascinating journalism.

Todd Benoit, for the most part, holds the Bangor school system as a
benchmark.  If one were to advocate the advantages of small rural
schools, he'd ask if that implied that Bangor's 4000 students were
somehow receiving a lower quality education.

If one suggested that teachers or administrators would be less
accessible or responsive under a regionalized system, he said, with
distinct impatience, that he found the teachers in Bangor to be
readily and sufficiently accessible.

At one point he asked if we thought that Bangor schools could be
divided into four 1000 student units and run as efficiently.  Of
course not.  Could Bangor's students be spread out across Aroostook
County and given the same education at the same per pupil cost?

For him, I think Bangor forms the most reasonable measure of
streamlined relationship between school and municipality.  Where we
see advantageous vertical integration in the relationships Union
superintendents develop with multiple local school boards, warrant
committees, select-boards, and town meeting assemblies, he sees
outmoded inefficiency.

Where we see a direct relationship between town governance, school
administration, and educational vision, he sees divorce-able,
compartmented business functions.

And, in summary, for him, any suggestion that schools would be
pressured to close under regionalization sounds like a conspiracy
theory put forward by people wearing tinfoil hats.

When we voice the hazards, complexity, and unintended consequences, I
think he hears only chords of obfuscation and obstruction.

For me, it was useful to be faced with that for a while, as I'm sure
his views are widespread -- it's good to travel to foreign lands.  Not
sure it was as educational for them.  But they're in the news
business, not education.