[Local-Maine-Schools] The Consolidation Bill Reality Check

[Dick Atlee]

This document, intended to inform legislators (and citizens) of the 
realities inherent in the cruel and unusual Consolidation Bill to be 
discussed and voted on on Monday and Tuesday, June 4 and 5, can also be 
found in various formats online:

Web page
   http://mdischools.net/20070601_consolidation_bill_reality_check.htm
Adobe Reader PDF
   http://mdischools.net/20070601_consolidation_bill_reality_check.pdf
Word
   http://mdischools.net/20070601_consolidation_bill_reality_check.doc
Word-processor-independent ("rich text format")
   http://mdischools.net/20070601_consolidation_bill_reality_check.rtf.

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       A True Reality Check on the School Consolidation Bill
                      From the MDI Study Group
                            June 1, 2007

The school consolidation bill reported out of the Appropriations 
Committee on May 31 is 60 pages long.  In the waning days of the 
legislative session, state lawmakers are now asked to read, understand, 
and vote on all 60 pages of this bill in a mere five or six days.  Most 
of them lack any first-hand knowledge about how education is actually 
provided in this state.  Worse, they have been subjected to months of 
misleading, and in some cases false, information about the nature of the 
issues the bill purports to address.  And now, at the eleventh hour, 
they confront obvious misstatements about what is in the bill as they 
attempt to determine how it will work in practice.

There is simply no way a legislator in these circumstances can 
understand the damage this bill is capable of inflicting on both 
education and the life of communities -- particularly small communities 
-- in our state.

We have read this bill and studied and discussed it.  We have done so 
having a long, first-hand acquaintance with education, and with 
collaboration among communities resulting in an efficient administration 
and a high-quality, cohesive educational K-12 system.  Ours has not been 
a top-down, blunt-force process driven by the Augusta education 
bureaucracy, but one of compromise and cooperation among small 
communities with disparate interests.  And it has worked very well.

This bill, if passed, will destroy that.  We want to tell you why and 
how, so that all who vote on this bill will clearly understand its 
effects in our classrooms and in our communities, and can be held 
responsible for the damage it will do if they vote for it and it is enacted.

The governor's decision to embed this bill in the budget has 
far-reaching implications, not the least of which is the allowance of so 
little time for consideration and opportunity to suggest changes that 
would make it more effective as a cost-saving mechanism and less 
destructive of education.  At this late date we believe there is no 
alternative but to remove it from the budget and reject it.

WHO WE ARE

This description is based on the Regional School Unit (RSU) the 
Commissioner has proposed for us -- the communities on Mount Desert 
Island and our neighbor, Trenton.  Up until now,  School Union 98 has 
consisted of the MDI communities -- Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Tremont, 
and Southwest Harbor -- and three outer island communities: Cranberry 
Isles, Frenchboro, and Swans Island.  Trenton, with its own elementary 
school, has traditionally sent the majority of its students as tuition 
students to MDI High School.  The union is characterized by:

  * considerable differences between municipalities in population size
     and property valuation
  * each town with its own elementary school funded by the town
  * a joint high school, with costs shared through a funding formula
     combining student population and property values
  * a common curriculum across all elementary schools
  * a consistent teacher contract across all schools.
  * a central office consisting solely of essential personnel:
     superintendent, business manager, special education director,
     curriculum director, IT manager, and a teacher leader who works
     with new teachers
  * almost no state subsidy except for special education

While there is undoubtedly room for additional efficiency, Union 98 
works well and provides both a high-quality education.  At the same 
time, local control over K-8 education encourages the kind of parental 
involvement known for improving education and reducing discipline problems.

THE ILLUSORY TOWN VOTE ON CONSOLIDATION (Sec. A-13, subch 2:5, p. 52)

This is government by decree, not democracy.  The referendum, in which 
the ballot wording makes clear that a "no" vote will trigger a loss of 
state subsidies (for us about $1.4 million, for others, a lot more), 
determines only who a town partners with, not the fact that it is 
guaranteed to lose local governance. And it should be noted that the 
Commissioner of Education has final say about the arrangements (Sec. 
A-36, p. 37-42; Sec. A-13 subch 2/1461:7, p. 53)

SCHOOL UNIONS OUTLAWED (Secs. A-19 to 20, p. 31)

Our union actually functions well.  As a model it could well be applied 
to other communities in the state.  Opponents of unions argue they are 
inefficient and can't be made efficient. That is a false assertion. 
While any organization can be inefficient, regardless of its structure, 
there is no evidence to suggest that a different structure would serve 
Union 98 better than our current system. We know this, in part, because 
less than a year ago we studied the pros and cons of becoming an SAD. We 
concluded our towns would not profit from that change.

END OF HYBRID FUNDING MECHANISM (Sec. A-13, subch 3/1481, p. 13)

Because of the diversity of size and property valuation on MDI, our 
union required a hybrid form of cost allocation for the high school, 
achieved through much work and a special act of the Legislature.  The 
bill purports to retain such arrangements, but it also nullifies them if 
they are modified, and moving from our union to the proposed RSU would 
require modification.

COST ALLOCATION SOLELY BY STUDENT POPULATION (Sec. A-28, p. 33)

Bar Harbor is by far the largest among our towns, but its costs have 
been kept down by the hybrid funding mechanism -- the town of Mount 
Desert has a much high valuation.  Once student population becomes the 
sole determinant, Bar Harbor's share of costs will rise $880,000.  It is 
not clear Bar Harbor would be able or willing to shoulder this.  This 
will almost certainly result in budget cuts beyond even those required 
by the bill, and it puts small towns at the mercy of larger ones (see 
Loss of Local Governance, below).

PROPERTY VALUES AND THE 2-MIL MINIMUM (Sec. A-29/3-A/B1, p. 34)

The Town of Mount Desert's high valuation has caused its contribution to 
the high school to be relatively high on a per-pupil basis.  A 
population-based mechanism would seem to offer relief.  But the high 
valuation has produced a mil rate of about 1.2 for education spending. 
By contrast, the bill mandates a minimum 2 mil rate, with the surplus 
shared among the other members of the RSU.  This would cost Mount Desert 
an extra $1.2 million, also resulting in budget cuts beyond even those 
required by the bill.

LOSS OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE & LOCAL BUDGETARY/SPENDING CONTROL
  (Sec. A-13, subch 2:9:B, p. 54; Sec. A-23, subch. 3:1472, p. 5)

The bill abolishes local school boards.  Although it permits the RSU 
board to recreate local advisory boards, these boards could have no 
budgetary authority and exist only at the pleasure of the RSU. 
Therefore, all control of local schools lies in the RSU board, in which 
the various permitted voting methods are essentially proportional to 
population, favoring high-enrollment, low-valuation towns.

Bar Harbor's size guarantees that by combining with any one of our 
medium-sized towns it could outvote all other towns.  The potential for 
this kind of raw power politics is enormous, given the harsh realities 
of the cuts being proposed in the bill (Secs. A-24 to 26, pp. 32-34, see 
below) and the extra $36.5 million cut in GPA funding, and is virtually 
guaranteed to eliminate the cooperative relationships that have been 
established here.  The same dynamic is likely to play out in other 
similar districts, in which the smaller communities will be at the mercy 
of the larger communities

Any community with serious school maintenance issues will be at the whim 
of the financial situation and relative priorities of an RSU in which it 
may have relatively little say.

In short, the people in any town in an RSU no longer can control the 
quality or cost of the education in their local elementary school.

SCHOOL CLOSURES INEVITABLE
(Sec. A-13, subch 6:1512, p. 30, and Sec. A-23, p. 32)

The bill purports not to close any schools.  However, the bill's large 
cuts will inevitably create pressure to close smaller (and thus 
relatively expensive) schools.  The bill requires a vote at a town 
referendum to close a school, but also requires ballot language stating 
that failure to close the school will require the payment of an amount 
equal to the savings that would result from closing the school -- in 
addition to the town's normal share.  Even if the school survives this 
lopsided language, the financial dynamics and budgetary power of the RSU 
may well squeeze it into nonexistence.  Despite repeated assertions to 
the contrary, such foreseeable outcomes will be the direct 
responsibility of those who vote to pass this bill.

REQUIRED CUTS FLY IN THE FACE OF REALITY (Secs. A-24 to 27, pp. 32-33)

A arbitrary 5% cut in transportation spending in the face of rapidly 
rising fuel prices may require -- as in some Massachusetts towns -- that 
students be charged a fee for riding buses, or for bus maintenance to be 
deferred.  An arbitrary 5% cut in building maintenance spending in an 
RSU where a school has a serious maintenance problem could have serious 
repercussions, or cause postponement of needed regular maintenance.  And 
this is all on top of the $36.5 million GPA across-the-board cut.

A cut of administrative function expenditures to 50% of Essential 
Programs and Services (EPS) level in a union like ours, which runs a 
lean but educationally productive central office at 166% of EPS, would 
mean a 70% cut, leaving room for virtually none of the educational 
leadership staff (see above) who have made the high quality of our 
education possible.

THE "MINIMUM" EPS AS A HARD MAXIMUM AND THE ILLUSION OF "TRANSPARENCY" 
(Sec. A-13 subch 4/1485, p. 15; Sec. A-13 subch 4/1486:3, p. 17)

EPS was conceived as the minimum amount of education spending needed to 
produce adequate Maine Learning Results.  It is now being severely cut 
back, in violation of its intended purpose.  This constitutes a clear 
abandonment of the aim of this consolidation legislation as professed in 
Sec. A-13 subch 1/1451 -- to offer "equitable opportunity for all 
students to demonstrate achievement of the content standards of the 
State's system of learning results."

Eighty percent of Maine school districts have traditionally voted, often 
in town meetings, to exceed EPS.  To do so under the new bill, however, 
requires a referendum, in which the ballot wording explicitly states 
that voting NO will reduce property taxes for education, while not 
permitting any statement of why a YES vote would be advisable or even 
necessary -- as one legislator commented, "a choice between apple pie 
and a rock." The absence of budget consideration at a town meeting 
leaves no opportunity for an explanation of the budget to those voting 
on it, all the more important given that the budget must be presented to 
those voters in a mind-numbing mass of itemized figures that experience 
tells us will be ignored by the majority of busy people.

TAKE THE SCHOOLS, LEAVE THE DEBT (Sec. A-13, subch 2:8, p. 53-54)

The bill purports to require an RSU to shoulder the construction debt 
related to any property it takes from a previous district.  However, it 
leaves a huge loophole by not requiring this for construction debt 
incurred without state subsidy.  All the construction debt in our 
potential RSU falls into this category.  Accordingly, the new RSU may 
take any or all of our local elementary schools and leave the individual 
towns with the construction debt.

SCHOOL CHOICE (Sec. A-13 subch 3/1479, p. 12)

School choice is preserved for those towns that historically have 
tuitioned their students to a high school located in another town.  The 
choice will not be available to others in the RSU.  In our case, Trenton 
students would be members of our RSU, but would be free to attend 
another high school (that is, not MDI High School) while our RSU would 
be obligated to pay that tuition expense.

IN SUMMARY

This bill would not have the positive effects it so emphasizes in Sec. 
A-13 subchapter 1 section 1451 on page 2.  Instead, for many schools and 
districts, and in many ways, some obvious, some subtle, some immediate, 
some evident only later, it will have drastically negative affects all 
over the state on the quality of education and the relationship of 
communities to their schools.  All this in the name of net property tax 
relief, the claims for which, when looked at on the ground, are very 
dubious.  For the welfare of this state and our children, this bill must 
be killed, and a realistic and targeted approach for increasing 
efficiency adopted instead.


Dick Atlee <atlee at umd.edu>
Brian Hubbell <sparkflashgap at gmail.com>
Rob Liebow <rliebow at u98.k12.me.us>
John March <jpmarch at verizon.net>
Gail Marshall <gmarshall at wildmoo.net>
Paul Murphy <paul at exploreacadia.com>
Amy Young <youngsinswh at verizon.net>