[Local-Maine-Schools] Fwd: 3/13/2007: Gendron, Rier, and Silvernail at Appropriations

[Gail Marshall]

To the Education Committee,
It has been a rather tough week since your report on school  
consolidation was issued. The Governor and Commissioner have seen fit  
to attack authors of the majority report along with  our school  
administrations, apparently believing they can do this with  
impunity.  If I were feeling light-hearted about it, I would say  
"join the club."  But I am not.
However,  I do want to tell you that while this entire process is  
profoundly flawed, and the likely consequences for the schools,  
students  and communities I serve  will be negative no matter what  
emerges, I do appreciate that your deliberations reflect that  
education is a very complex business and our children and our  
communities are not widgets.
It is shocking to me that now the appropriation committee is at work  
attempting to craft legislation with profound educational  
consequences. They seems to be far outside their portfolio. One  
painful consequence is that almost  totally absent at this point is a  
reasoned discussion about the consequences of these proposals on the  
quality of life in our classrooms.
I have seen our schools "up close and personal" when run by a strong,  
hands-on central office and when not. It is axiomatic that our  
students benefit far more with the former than with the latter. It is  
essential that you "go to the mat" over the rights and obligations of  
communities to provide for that strong leadership.
On a final note regarding the aforementioned impunity, this governor  
is laying the ground work for a schism within voters in his own  
party. I can tell you that I will never again vote for an individual  
simply because of her/his party affiliation, and I will never vote  
for someone who acts to grievously wound our schools.  And I can also  
tell you I am not alone.
Again, thank you for your efforts to date.  I know there are hundreds  
of people within the very small towns I live in and serve who  
appreciate  your more modest and mutually-respectful approach.
Gail Marshall
School Board member,
Union 98




Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Brian Hubbell" <sparkflashgap at gmail.com>
> Date: March 13, 2007 7:22:42 PM EDT
> To: "Local Maine Schools List" <local-maine- 
> schools at lists.svaha.com>, "Brian Hubbell" <sparkflashgap at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Local-Maine-Schools] 3/13/2007: Gendron, Rier, and  
> Silvernail at Appropriations
>
> Report from the Appropriation Committee's "conversation" with
> Commissioner Gendron
> Tuesday, March 13, 2007
>
> This afternoon, at the request of the legislature's Appropriations
> Committee, Commissioner Gendron, along with Jim Rier, DOE's Policy
> Director of Management Information Systems, and Educational Policy
> professor David Silvernail, provided their perspectives on the need
> for "urgent and significant structural reform" for Maine schools.
>
> Seamless comprehension is not always possible when trying to carry on
> a regular day job while following this sort of discussion on a little
> laptop without any of the accompanying visual aids to which those in
> the Committee room were presented.  However, I did gather a few
> interesting points.
>
> The DOE's pitch to the Committee led off with an ominous projection.
> Jim Rier explained that if education spending continues at the rate
> the DOE projects -- from 2.8% in '07 to 3.45% in 08-09 to 3.82% in
> 10-11 the actual dollar amounts of GPA will run smack into the state
> spending caps mandated by LD-1. Hence the emergency as, at that point,
> presumably education crowds out all other state spending except for
> incarceration.
>
> But, in the detail, it turns out that the greatest anticipated
> increases are projected to result not from excess in school governance
> but rather from a 4.3% increase in Special Ed and a significant
> increase in debt service approved by the previous legislature and a
> wave of already committed new state-funded school construction.
>
> How those two components are to be ameliorated through consolidation
> was not part of any ensuing conversation that I heard.  But I may have
> missed something.
>
> What displaced the general attention instead was the factoid that
> system administration costs, as reported, have not tracked the
> declines in enrollment.  This is what earns the projected arc of
> expenses the descriptor: unsustainable.
>
> ***
>
> At different times, several Committee members asked the Commissioner
> to speculate on what savings might be available through the
> "collaborations" recommended by the Education Committee.  But the
> DOE's position on this is that there just isn't enough information
> upon which to base such projections.  And, apparently, given this,
> their position is that by default the savings will be probably be
> "insufficient" and certainly indeterminate without a better
> understanding of the necessary "requirements" and "teeth."
>
> ***
>
> As an interesting contrast, the DOE appears quite content to
> speculate, and even book, savings from "consolidation," although when
> asked directly by the Committee, Dr. Silvernail said that there is
> conflicting data on whether or not consolidation elsewhere has
> produced efficiency and savings.  One thing that makes it hard to
> compare, he says, is that administrative costs elsewhere have been
> reported --well-- differently.
>
> The savings that the DOE IS banking on are simple to explain.  Dr.
> Silvernail has studied four departments of school expenses in Maine:
> system administration, transportation, plant maintenance and
> operation, and special ed.  These he's plotted as per pupil costs and
> graphed them against district sizes.  This data shows that the lowest
> per pupil costs for these departments occurs in districts of 2500-3000
> students.
>
> Got it?  The Appropriations Committee certainly gets it.
>
> Then, here's the magic.  You take all the other smaller school
> districts in Maine, add up what they spend on those four departments
> and store that in the memory of your calculator.  You take those same
> districts, consolidate them into districts of 2500-3000, then multiply
> all the students in the new districts at the same per-pupil rate
> expended by the existing 2500 student districts, subtract that figure
> from the antiquated number in your calculator memory and you've saved
> $120,000,000 over three years.
>
> Any questions?  Exigencies of real-life and fallacies of logic aside,
> arithmetically it should be simple enough for a fifth-grader to check.
>  Silvernail said he has not yet had a chance to model the structure of
> any of these new ideal districts.  But the Commissioner says she has,
> based on one, ...or two, or three... exemplary units of comparable
> size.
>
> And the Appropriation Committee appeared to find it quite convincing,
> as near the very end Representative Flood asked the Commissioner,
> almost pleadingly, to explain why the Education Committee seemed to
> have gone so far astray and picked a minimum district size of 1200,
> when any one awake could see that 2500 was the right size for every
> district from Berwick and Portland right up through Greenville, East
> Machias, and Mattawamkeag -- well, yes, except, of course, for the
> islands.
>
> The Commissioner, regretfully, couldn't help with that.  Even over the
> internet audio her shrug was visible.  Not being able to speak for the
> Education Committee, all she could offer was that, yes, given the
> research, 2500 /did/ seem right to the DOE as well.
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