[Local-Maine-Schools] Education Committee: January 8 (January thaw)

[Brian Hubbell]

Tuesday, January 8, Education Committee work session

As a whole, the Committee seems to be getting its game back.  The
field for this afternoon's work session contained several mud-holes.
But, while a few Committee members were drawn near, in the end none
got mired, although one nearly lost a shoe.

After voting to table reconsideration of the Committee's 10/3 divided
vote on LD1932 last December, the Committee moved directly to several
presentations.

The first was a presentation from Jim Rier, one which he can probably
recite now in his sleep, about the different types of Maine's systems
of school governance -- municipal school committees, SADs, CSDs, and
School Unions.  This was in response to Representative Makas's request
on Friday for "a cheat sheet" so she could keep the distinctions
straight during the deliberations ahead.

Senator Mills pressed Rier a bit for more information about the range
of consolidated regional services that Unions may provide.  Rier
allowed that, beyond his describing them primarily as a way for
municipal districts to share superintendents, some Unions do provide
more regional consolidated services and that these are shared by a
range of formulae among their member towns.  But, beyond that, he
hadn't prepared more detail.

Rier also provided, in some sort of paper form, a summary of the legal
responsibilities of present local school boards.  This was a request
also last Friday from Representative Sutherland who said that, from
her tenure as a school committee member, she remembered being told the
board had authority "only to hire the superintendent and set the
calendar."  If this were so, Sutherland wondered on Friday what was
causing the compelling interest in "local control".

After Rier, David Silvernail stepped up to the plate with a sheaf-ful
of "exhibits" correlating the expenses of different school
administrative units associated with school unions.

Without the handouts, a listener was at some disadvantage to follow
the data down the specific column.  But, even with the data, the
Committee made slow headway here, as many found the subcategorizing of
administrative entities within unions frequently unclear.

This was made muddier and the effort was nearly derailed with the
realization that, in instances, along with municipal school
committees, a school union could in fact contain both an SAD and a CSD
(as does Union 98, with Swan's Island and the MDI HS CSD) which made
teasing out the per-pupil operating expenses of each and drawing
conclusions about them in relation to each separate governance
structure became both sticky and recursive.

Nonetheless, this was the point Silvernail attempted to pursue – with
the observation that "in general" more units with higher costs could
be found within Unions than in SADs.

Most of Silvernail's exhibits were from material he presented last
spring to the Appropriations ad hoc Subcommittee on Education to help
them rationalize a minimum size for a reorganized district.  But, new
this winter, Silvernail is developing some more studies that plot MEA
scores against per-pupil expense to compare "return on investment"
across districts.

To the Committee's overall credit, only Representative Sutherland got
her boot stuck in the logical fallacy that Silvernail's data
established that Unions are inherently inefficient.

Both Bowman and Mitchell were quick to point out that there might be
other factors affecting per-pupil cost not related to governance
structure – say, just as an example, maybe ...valuation.

Silvernail conceded this to be not only true, but likely to be a much
more consistent predictor of per-pupil expenditure although he
continued to assert that one could draw some conclusions about
per-pupil expense as a function of both governance and size.

Bowman said, "What we hear is that unions and their governments are
inefficient -- but does the data actually tell us that?  Are unions
inherently more expensive due to their make-up of the structure or are
they not?

Silvernail said there was no clean conclusion in this regard, relating
governance to increased cost. "There is no straight line to any
answer", he said.

The Commissioner said she had to disagree.  "You can't compare SADs to
Unions – they're not equivalent.  It is policy decisions that drive
expenses. Does that result from union governance?  I say it is because
that is how policy decisions are made."

But it was Representative Makas, perhaps the dark horse with her cheat
sheet, who nailed it:  "These are correlative data," she said. "So we
can't infer a causal relationship."

The Committee reconvenes tomorrow morning at 9:00AM (note change in
schedule) with a panel of RPC facilitators who will present their view
of the "implementation."

Not sure how the facilitators on the panels were selected but they
most likely come from the stable at the Department of Education. Bill
Ferm, MDI's own local volunteer facilitator was not contacted.