[Local-Maine-Schools] Fwd: Donaldson presentation

[Rob Liebow]

Everyone...

I have been listening closely to the education committee hearings each day
on the internet and I firmly believe that as much contact with them as
possible is important at this critcal time...I was at a meeting just today
with the Ellsworth and U92 superintendents and they both say that they have
heard that the "folks in Augusta" presumably the education committee are
very concerned and atuned to the ideas that have emanated from our
area...Rob
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Hubbell" <sparkflashgap at gmail.com>
To: "Margaret Jeffery" <mjeffery1 at gwi.net>
Cc: "Local Maine Schools List" <local-maine-schools at lists.svaha.com>
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Local-Maine-Schools] Fwd: Donaldson presentation


> 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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>>
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