[Local-Maine-Schools] Whats Next on School Consolidation

[Paul Murphy]

Yesterday Brian Hubbell, Gail Marshall, Dick Atlee, Rob Liebow and I spent the day in Augusta. We met with Hannah Pingree, Ted Koffman, Dennis Damon and Department of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron over the course of several hours. We have worked feverishly as a group since the consolidation language was released last week. We met with legislators in person and by phone through the weekend. Our legislators fully understood what exactly in the language we saw as most damaging to local control. 

It became clear on Tuesday morning that a compromise on this budget would be reached some time during the day. While it was clearly our preference to have this bill voted down, in the end we were faced with the choice of standing on principal and having a bill passed which gutted our local control or trying to find language that salvaged that control as well as other issues. 

Many of you know that I am a vocal critic of Commissioner Gendron. That has not changed but yesterday, on what was a frantically paced day for everyone in Augusta, at our Legislator's urging, The Commissioner gave generously and earnestly of her time and attention. Amendment T which was passed in the wee hours this morning allows for municipal school boards, budgeting for municipal schools at the municipal level, and funding for municipal schools at the municipal level. We were assured that we could make clear in district budget referenda that none of the monies for municipal schools would be raised outside of the municipality, which ought to satisfy voters from other municipalities.  I won't go into all of the smaller language changes that were made but suffice it to say in the end the bill is, I think, the best we could hope for under the circumstances and something, that if we are very careful about constructing the new RSU, leaves us very much in tact.

I should be clear that we believe this entire process has been and remains bad. It is clear that legislators are very unhappy with The Governor about it. The time line remains crazy, the matter remains unstudied in any meaningful way and the top down nature of it all is at best objectionable.

I believe Hannah, Ted and Dennis stepped up in a very big way and served us well under the most difficult circumstances.
  ----- Original Message -----  
  From: Lynne Williams 
  To: pete 
  Cc: local-maine-schools at mainetalk.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 8:47 AM
  Subject: Re: [Local-Maine-Schools] Whats Next on School Consolidation


  I agree.  Legislative elections come up in 2008, and we need to know where they stood - if rural legislators, in particular, exhibited more loyalty to their leadership than to their constituents, then they need to be defeated.
  Lynne Williams, Bar Harbor




  On Jun 6, 2007, at 8:42 AM, pete wrote:


    Friends and neighbors and those concerned about our schools,

    It is time to consider what to do if the legislature fails to protect our schools by preserving local control and fails to act on providing equitable funding for our system.

    It will become important to record for future action those who are responsible for the outcome and reward those who support education in rural Maine and to hold accountable those who are responsible for changes that will weaken local control and ultimately close schools.

    Suggest that when the vote record is available that it be posted on this site.  If no record is available we should poll all representatives and senators to get them on record as to their vote.

    Pete Johnson
    Greenville, Maine
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  "I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." 
  – Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) 






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