[Local-Maine-Schools] 20080129 Judy Sproule

[Ralph Chapman]

[text of pdf attachment pasted below]


When I look at the current state of the school district consolidation
debacle, I wonder how we came to be so affluent that we can afford to
waste our resources in this way. Hundreds of Maine citizens have
invested thousands of hours of their time in an effort to comply with
an ill-conceived, unexamined law that would not have passed on its own
merits. The legislators who voted for it have been criticized for
being out of touch and unresponsive to their constituents. Now the
Education Committee, which ironically did not have a hand in its
creation, has been tasked with patching it up so those good citizens
can get back to work. The Committee has spent this past month
discussing the application of randomly placed band-aids to a few of
its acknowledged flaws, summarily dismissing others, and excepting
Senator Mills' request to the contrary, denying the need to solicit
input from those same people who have been wrestling with it.
Meanwhile, those good citizens, for the most part, would not shed a
tear of regret for the time they have already spent if this whole
scheme were to go up in smoke. Many of them are standing by holding
gasoline-soaked rags. One of these rags is a proposed amendment to
allow towns to hold their vote now to opt out of consolidation,
bypassing the prerequisite of constructing a plan and getting the
Commissioner's approval.

An often repeated criticism heard from all levels of participants in
this fiasco is its unrealistically aggressive timeframe, even assuming
this law were functional. This past Friday, the Education Committee
breezed through the list of school bill requests with alarming speed,
including five proposals addressing delay, which they deemed to have
already addressed.  In Augusta's haste to avoid careful scrutiny and
be done with this law, they promise to bequeath a correspondingly
bigger mess of unknown problems upon the public. In the seven months
subsequent to its emergency legislation, real impediments to
implementation have surfaced, euphemistically identified as
"unintended financial consequences" and in time, more will follow. For
example, this month school boards begin their annual budget meetings,
and many of them will discover that either they no longer qualify for
the regular state subsidy for education, or even worse, they will lose
it in a subsequent year. What this portends for many potential RSU's
is that they will transition from being eligible to ineligible for
state subsidy, and the results for these units will be dramatic cuts
in state aid, arising as brand new "unintended financial
consequences", and irremediable by law. If it passes, LD 1932, the
touted "fix" for "unintended financial barriers", is a very small
band-aid with inadequate adhesive. Taxpayers will be quick to note
that while their school boards can hold their budgets to miniscule
increases of a few percentage points, their town's share of education
costs will still increase astronomically, and property taxes will jump
to cover it.

Another factor in the timeframe discussion is that in three months
over 38,000 signatures were collected on petitions to request the
legislature to repeal this law or call for a public referendum. The
additional required signatures will be obtained in short order, and in
November 2009 the public will finally have the opportunity to voice
its opinion. In the meantime, we need a moratorium to assess what has
happened. No one disagrees with the concept of saving administrative
costs of education, but there is no justification for creating new
expenses and increasing property taxes to satisfy legislative whim or
abdication of responsibility. Maine has a budget crisis, tax reform,
and total economic viability at stake, which should be the priority of
this legislature. School boards and school administrators need to
return their focus to our students without delay. Let's not waste any
more of our resources, and let's be practical. If the legislature
lacks the courage to admit a mistake and repeal this law on its own,
it owes it to the public to put it on hold until all its flaws can be
identified, evaluated, and the people can have their input.

Jan. 29, 2008
Judy Sproule
Trenton, ME
jcsproule at roadrunner.com
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