[Local-Maine-Schools] 3/19/2007: Education Subcommittee ofAppropriations

[John March]

The capitol is supposed to be a smoke-free public space, but the DOE
continues to blow smoke . . . .  Were they granted an indulgence?

Now the legislature moves into panic mode---committees splintering into
subcommittees, other committees reaching for the loose ball---and the
results aren't pretty.  I'm reminded of passengers on a runaway train.  When
will someone have the good sense to go forward and pull the brake lever?

Brian is right, of course.  Island schools are different only in degree, not
in kind.  All K-12 schools live or die on local commitment, local
involvement, local support.  And it is precisely these qualities that
Gendron and Baldacci consider expendable.  

Legislators who offer watered-down proposals, Gendron Lite, should still
explain why it's so urgent to do something rather than nothing.  Is the
wrath of Baldacci really so great?  The emperor has no clothes, but too many
legislators are busy designing a new suit from the same material.  God
forbid that we should pass NO legislation, rebuild the budget from the
ground up (burning the envelope on the back of which the governor developed
his plan), and appoint a task force to travel the state and report back in a
year or two.  That would be too obvious, too deliberate, too calculated to
produce a result people could actually support.  Never happen.

John March




-----Original Message-----
From: local-maine-schools-bounces at lists.svaha.com
[mailto:local-maine-schools-bounces at lists.svaha.com] On Behalf Of Brian
Hubbell
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 7:10 PM
To: Local Maine Schools List
Subject: [Local-Maine-Schools] 3/19/2007: Education Subcommittee
ofAppropriations

As if things weren't already complex enough, the Appropriations
Committee has formed its own subcommittee, chaired by Orono's
Representative Cain, to coordinate its interest in the matter of
school governance and its effects on the budget bill.

Moreover, this Education Subcommittee of the Appropriations and
Financial Affairs Committee opened its work session this afternoon by
hearing from the Taxation Committee which, over the weekend, decided
itself to stake a claim to a section of the rhubarb.

The part that Taxation claims is the section of the Governor's budget
bill that seeks to require that the savings claimed through
regionalization are directly returned as property tax relief.

In this respect, I believe, the Taxation Committee wants to make sure
that it understands the mechanism and its impacts.  This, presumably,
is to make sure it's not caught by surprise when, either from rushed
planning or unintended consequences, the net result is instead an
increase in local tax when the projected savings don't materialize.

While this latter seems well worth investigating, the Appropriations
Committee now feels itself as well suffering under the same pressure
of too little time as the Education Committee and so they urged
Taxation themselves to deliberate with haste.  Taxation promised to
return with their proposal within a week.

Then the sub-committee heard again from DOE's Jim Rier who presented
them with an expanded edition of the map of the state divided into its
26 regions based upon the County Technical Centers, along with some
accompanying tables listing the schools, administrators, and pupils
within each town in each of those regions.

The Sub-committee did make it plain that it was not interested in
going back to advocating for the Governor's proposed divisions.  In
response, Rier offered that he thought the maps were just a good place
to start the discussion.  Several of the sub-committee members were
pointedly interested in asking Rier how easy it would be to
reconfigure the maps to follow some anticipated Committee work
sessions.  Rier offered a one-day "turn-around".  Representative Cain
observed politely that it was probably unrealistic to expect the maps
to function as interactive video games.

One thing that Rier added which I had not heard from DOE before was
the admission that the 26 district map is based on the original
legislative divisions of the County Technical Centers, but that it
does not in fact reflect how the administration of the CTCs actually
worked out.  (In Hancock Country, we knew that already -- as HCTC
apparently is administered by Ellsworth, not by any broader
cooperative association.)

Several sub-committee members asked how the Technical Centers worked
in the larger regions.  Rier didn't know.  The sub-committee consensus
was that there probably were some satellite programs.

Representative Cain also summarized some of the discussion from the
sub-committee's Sunday work session (which I wasn't available to
follow).  She reported that the Education Committee has continued
working on language for their own proposal, which now is really two or
perhaps three different proposals.  (These I take to be the one
following the Committee's original recommendation, one building upon
Senator Mills minority report, and perhaps another similar one based
upon a larger minimum district size)

So, the sub-committee will meet again tomorrow at 3:00 with a report
back from the Education Committee.  Tomorrow the sub-committee also
will have Silvernail present some profiles of "high-performing"
schools that operate over EPS limits.  So perhaps MDI schools will be
mentioned -- although, as we know, with four out of five schools in
the state over EPS, being just in that category doesn't make us all
that terrificly exceptional.

Several times sub-committee members mentioned the importance at this
point of getting feedback from their caucuses.  For the caucuses,
Representative Millet has made some graphs of the "sustainablilty
issue" affecting GPA.

The sub-committee concluded by hearing a presentation of a proposal
from the Islands. The presentation was made by George Joseph,
superintendent from Vinalhaven, on behalf of a group called the Maine
Island School Collaborative and was based upon a concept draft from
Representative Pingree.

The proposal emphasizes collaborations based upon Maine Heritage
Policy Center's educational service districts and local control of
island schools.

Joseph pointed out that EPS has never come close to describing the
costs of island schools and that in all of Silvernail's studies he'd
always had to thrown out the island figures because they threw
everything else off.

He also pointed out that islands were minimum receivers of state
subsidy and so did not draw in anyway substantially on GPA.

In as clear a way as could be imagined, he explained that for island
schools to survive, it is essential to have them under the control of
island citizens.  He said it just doesn't work to have administrators
from away.  The local people have to be involved.  Otherwise they
won't support it and, after a time, commit will wane.  Reminding that
currently Island schools function under a variety of structures and
they are very little burden on the state, Joseph said it was
critically important to allow people to choose the governing structure
that works for their communities.  Otherwise, the schools will wither.

This prompted an interesting series of questions from Senator Turner
who wanted to know why just assuring island towns that their schools
would be closed wouldn't be sufficient.

Joseph explained that the schools were sustained by their actual
ownership and the pride and determination that followed from it.
Without that, he said, support for the schools wouldn't last.

Turner pressed on.  But, how can we allow that argument to prevail
from the islands, when he hears the same concern from his constituents
in Yarmouth?

Joesph's answer, not surprisingly, was that islands are different.

But, the real answer, of course, is that the issue is not so
different.  The stark situation of the islands just serves to
illustrate the matter more plainly.  Local commitment arises directly
from local governance.  Once control and pride of ownership are lost,
the extraordinary support required by such schools diminishes.
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