[Local-Maine-Schools] Department of Education takes off the gloves

[Brian Hubbell]

This just in:
*
**"Maine spends $24 million more per year than necessary on the education of
26,719 students educated in school unions, and with no added academic
benefit.*

*"New data by Dr. David Silvernail shows school unions of similar size to
school administrative districts cost far more per student.  He calculates
that if SAUs in unions would behave more like SADs in terms of spending,
savings would equal $57.5 million in state and local money.*

*"...As an example, the towns in MDI Schools spent between 35% and 74% over
EPS in 06-07 (in 07-08 that rises to 41% to 83%)."

--Maine Department of Education, March 3, 2008,
http://www.maine.gov/education/supportingschools/unions.html
*

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In these straitened times, finding itself no longer able to meet its own
financial obligations to support Maine education, the Department of
Education this week has turned toward a fresh educational vision, the
shearing off all local school spending above the basement grade.

No longer targeting mere administrative meat, currently the Department has
re-bent its blunderbuss toward the less wary game of all "unnecessary"
facets of classroom teaching.

In this Department's bold new paradigm, Maine's schools prepare for the
twenty-first century first by centralizing, and then by laying off the
central office staff.  The offices of regional coordinators of uniform
curriculum presumably can be vacated to make room for three or four crates
of DoE-sanctioned curriculum binders.  The work of special education
directors presumably can be more efficiently outsourced on a 'just-in-time
basis' through parental lawsuits.  Technology and transportation both
presumably will fall together more effectively under the invisible hand of
regional gravitation than ever previously under actual human oversight.

But, recall, that's now just the opening round.  Obliterating the entire
central school administration on Mount Desert Island in favor of anarchy
cuts only a few hundred dollars per student.  And the Department calculates
that schools on MDI spend many thousands of dollars more than "necessary" as
compared to EPS -- and moreover, by so doing, set a dangerous example to the
rest of the state.

Schools everywhere are made of two things: buildings and teachers.  So when
the Department of Education publishes a news release, as it did
today<http://www.maine.gov/education/supportingschools/unions.html>,
that says that schools on MDI are irresponsibly over-funded by 41% to 84%
what they actually mean is that MDI has too many teachers, too many
programs, and almost certainly too many schools.

What's most extraordinary about this Department of Education's new-found
mission of de-funding education on Mount Desert Island is that the schools
on MDI cost the state almost nothing.  Besides footing the full bill for the
construction and operation of their local schools through local property
tax, MDI residents support the Maine educational system through their sales
and income tax.  But, for the past two years, their primary return is the
state's redoubled assault on locally-approved school spending -- now
accompanied by the  bold assertion that our locally-supported school
programs are, in fact, superfluous and therefore wasteful.

Either somebody in Augusta needs a dope slap or it really is time to blow up
the bridge.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mainetalk.org/pipermail/local-maine-schools_mainetalk.org/attachments/20080303/95484465/attachment.htm>