[Local-Maine-Schools] Consequences of the alternate proposed district sizes

[Brian Hubbell]

Just to give some scale to the two figures for the proposed minimum
size for new districts -- the 1200 number that the Education Committee
proposes and the 2500 figure in Senator Mill's proposal which seems to
attract many legislators -- here are some local numbers that apply to
MDI:

Union 98 schools, combined, have around 1700 students.  In all of
Hancock County there are just over 7000 students.

So while it's not clear that a Union structure will remain acceptable,
a single district of MDI schools would survive the Education
Committee's current proposal.

Under Senator Mills' minimum size, it gets quite a bit more difficult
to divide up Hancock County, which isn't quite large enough to handle
three districts on its own.

Starting from MDI and working inland, swallowing up Trenton and
Lamoine would bring us only up to around 2000.

>From there, we could merge with Ellsworth, which would bring us to
3200 and pretty well shut out the rest of the towns in the county by
dividing them into two insufficient remainders.  Or else, we could
continue east.

Leaving Ellsworth aside, but incorporating the schools of Hancock,
Sullivan, Sumner, and Winter Harbor/Gouldsboro would bring in another
1000.  That's more than we need to reach 2500, but it's hard to
imagine splitting their union in half.

So, it would seem that, in our case, there's a particularly
significant difference between the two thresholds.  1200 keeps us
operating within our existing Union while anything over 2000 might as
well be 3000, as it brings us immediately into a district with half of
Hancock County and merges us with another high school and several
other central offices and teaching contracts.

....Just providing the facts, as I said, for scale....