[Local-Maine-Schools] "...allow state officials to concentrate on the classrooms ...with available resources"

[Dick Atlee]

It was interesting that a conservative member of the legislature (who is 
very conflicted over this bill) said to me the other day that the bill 
is about money, not education, and that it would probably hurt the kids 
in addition to the administrative staff (he believes his own 
"administrators" to be good people).  The only people he felt would not 
be hurt by it were teachers.

It's heartening that someone will not be hurt by this bill.  Yet it 
seems to me he is probably wrong.  The bill DOES provide for no movement 
or firings of teachers in the first year, and its proponents promise no 
school closings (an eerie echo from the TABOR supporters last year).

But what happens after that first year?  The raw financial squeeze it 
puts on districts, the loss of local control over small (read: 
relatively expensive) schools, and the heavy financial penalty a town 
must bear to keep such a school open, virtually guarantees school 
closures.  What happens to those teachers?  The DoE also is aiming for 
larger class sizes to save money (a wonderful plus for the education of 
kids, right?) -- how can this save money without eliminating teachers?

Ironically, since the bill calls for merging of bargaining units and 
preservation of collective bargaining (a good thing in itself), the 
logical pattern would be for each feature of a contract to pull in the 
highest value for that feature among all the contracts being merged. 
The obvious result of this will be to put additional pressure on the 
strapped districts to economize on the number of teachers.

At least this is what it looks like to the uneducated eye -- the 
Department and Board of Education will all come out fine in this bill, 
but everyone else is going to be damaged -- kids, administrators, 
teachers, even tax-payers -- in one way or the other.  If there are 
reasons that this is not so, I hope someone will lay them out here.

Dick

PS: an interesting feature of the bill is that the DoE is mandated to 
examine all unfunded mandates, and to identify those that, among other 
problems, are inadequately funded (Sec. A-45:4:B).  That must have been 
written by the DoE itself, given the keen grasp of how important lack of 
funding is on the ground :-)

Brian Hubbell wrote:
> Here's something that gets rhetorically more revealing the closer you read it:
> 
>> We need to move forward with a required reorganization, and we should
>> stick to the 2,500-pupil target. That will guarantee the necessary
>> savings and allow state officials to concentrate on the classrooms
>> across the state with available resources.
> 
>> Let's stand up for the children this time and not bow to the special
>> interests that want to retain positions and authority. This is about
>> kid power for the future, not adult power for the >present.
> 
> --James Carignan, Harpswell
> http://www.sunjournal.com/story/215058-3/LetterstotheEditor/Stand_up_for_the_children/
> 
> Apparently Carignan (who chairs the State Board of Education) and the
> Governor scrambled their eggs together on Saturday morning because in
> his Saturday morning radio address, the Governor warned that "special
> interests who are determined to maintain the status quo and block the
> path forward are feverishly working the halls of the State House."
> 
> --[Governor asks citizen support as final push begins]
> http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2007/06/02/governor_asks_citizen_support_as_final_push_begins/
> 
> Would that it were so.  These two need to be reminded that there is
> nothing more special about the interests of an elected school board
> than those of a state-appointed official or that of the Governor
> himself.