[Local-Maine-Schools] Fwd: Donaldson presentation

[Brian Hubbell]

The list of the Education Committee's members and their email
addresses can be found here:
http://janus.state.me.us/house/jt_com/edu.htm

-Brian
-----------------
On 2/9/07, Margaret Jeffery <mjeffery1 at gwi.net> wrote:
>
>  Gail,
>
>  Did you recognize any faces of members of the Appropriations or Education
> Committees at the Donaldson presentation?  I fear that they might not be as
> educated as one would hope.  I wish that Donaldson had been at the hearing
> on Monday, and am surprised that he wasn't.  Do you know whether he is
> giving any input to the joint committees as they come up with their plan?
>
>  Finally, do you have a list of the legislators serving on the joint
> committees so that we might contact them over the next day or two?
>
>  Thank you for the update.
>
>  Margaret
>
>
>
>
>  At 12:08 PM 2/9/2007 -0500, Gail Marshall wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Thursday night I attended the Bangor presentation by Gordon Donaldson and
> Owen Maurais, the Executive Director of Penequis Regional Educational
> Partnership.
>
>  Donaldson's report was basically a review of what was said in his
> Monograph. If you have not yet had a chance to look at that, you can find it
> at http://MDIschools.net.
>
>  I won't repeat all that he said or provided in written form, but will try
> to sample it for you.
>
>  The Questions he posed and answered were:"Are Maine schools
> 'over-administered'? If so, will we save a lot be "redistricting"? The
> answers were no to both. Regarding the first, between 99 and 04 we spent
> slightly more for administration but significantly less than the New
> England/New York averages. (Perennially we are 6th out of 7 in the NE/NY
> region.)
>
>  Does centralized decision-making in larger school districts pay off
> financially and educationally. Noting that you don't increase efficiency if
> you decrease quality, Donaldson pointed out that studies are deeply
> conflicted about that. Such equivocal data does not justify the contemplated
> upheaval.
>
>  Are proposals based on careful study of efficiencies in Maine's school
> districts?
>  NO, a review of the "studies" that we have had enough of fail to reveal any
> data that shows where system-wide inefficiencies exist
>
>  What functions can be centralized? What can not?
>   Here Donaldson discussed concerns about the need for a balance of power
> between parents/citizens, educators and the state and federal government. He
> quotes the Commissioner, "that...many schools continue to interpret the
> requirements as they please....Having regional centeres can pull all that
> together" Right now we have a lot of local interpretation and it's varied."
> He reads this as a bid for highly centralized control.
>
>  His answer to his question says that to a substantial degree regions could
> centralize financial plant management and transportation. You might somewhat
> centralize special ed staff and services (special ed, G&T, technology, prof.
> development, curriculum, fiscal and educational policy and planning (program
> evaluation, long-range planning, policy regarding goals and standards,
> contract negotiations. (Sounds like Union 98 to me.) He argues you cannot
> centralize student instruction and management, public information, relations
> and responsiveness, school culture, climate and leadership or community
> participation and support.
>
>  He concludes with a report that describes the centralization of control
> that has occurred nationally over the past 25 years, which has served to
> make this control remote and unresponsive to the parents and students in the
> schools.
>
>
>  Mr. Maurais spoke to the particulars of the six competing plans on the
> table in Augusta. The take away message from his talk is this:
>
>  Three of the plans, Baldacci, Turner and State Board of Education are
> mandatory consolidation proposals.
>
>  The other four, which some believe provide a basis for compromise, ALL to
> one degree or another have provisions that will, over the course of several
> years work to make it increasingly difficult to not loose local control.
> They do this with mandatory severe spending cuts, either in the
> administration or EPS line items or both, necessary approval or some sort of
> forced reorganization by DOE. In that regard they seem to be much like the
> assertion by the governor that his plan will "close no schools" Sure, local
> control is maintained, but the fine print will dictate that locals will be
> forced to decide on their own to merge to meet the dictates of the law. That
> means that we must be extremely careful to understand all pieces of any
> compromise bill that may emerge. We can not ever take at face value the
> assertion that local control will not be lost.
>
>  A couple of other notes: I sat next to a superintendent. He went to Augusta
> to hear the committee a couple of days ago. He remarked that they are having
> an extremely difficult time understanding what they are really doing and
> coming up with a package that will work. Also, he fears this debate may be a
> bit like the magician's distraction while the lady disappears from the box
> in that the real, devastating damage may come from a mandatory pass through
> of EPS "savings" which he doesn't yet totally understand. (Does anyone?) But
> the concerns is that it could strip far more resources from schools than we
> are currently imagining.
>
>  Another very interesting note from this person is that someone from the
> Maine Bond Bank testified that the plan to take schools and leave local
> municipalities with the debt is not an option because it would cause Maine's
> bond rating to take far too big a hit. Brian has already mentioned this in
> one of his mails.
>
>  I believe all of this shows that individuals must not only be listening in,
> but must also keep up pressure on members of the legislature to do no harm,
> and that each of these proposals contain elements that will do serious harm.
>
>  Joanne was at the meeting too, so I hope she will correct anything I have
> written that does not reflect what she heard.
>
>  Thanks,
>
>  Gail
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