Skip Greenlaw On Consolidation
The Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Education & Cultural Affairs will meet today at 9. Budget discussions will likely consume a great deal of time. Charter schools may also be touched on. School consolidation is still a hot topic among Maine educators. Despite the defeat of the consolidation repeal, the work to get consolidation right has not ended. Legislators will discuss how consolidation should proceed at the committee meeting. Skip Greenlaw of the Maine Coalition to Save Schools, Superintendent Roger Shaw of SAD42, and Superintendent Quentin Clark of western Maine will testify this afternoon. Here is a preview of what they will say.
The Maine Coalition to Save Schools led the fight to repeal school consolidation. They often cited unfair penalties, rigid structure, and lack of real savings in opposition of the current consolidation law. Now working to reform the system, MCSS are seeking solutions to those same problems. The MCSS has made the following seven recommendations to improve school consolidation for all Mainers.
1. Eliminate the size restrictions for consolidation.
This would allow more creative cost-saving collaborations between school units — both large exempt districts and small noncompliant ones.
2. Amend the law which encourages cooperation among school administrative units by allowing for collaboratives to qualify as a legitimate “alternative structure” relative to the consolidation law.
This would provide for other avenues of efficiencies besides consolidation of central office administration.
3. Remove the inequitable penalties for noncompliance and let districts create their own solutions based on the financial merits and the realities of diminished subsidies.
Given the broader pain of drastic reductions in state subsidy and the fact that these districts did comply with the law by formulating and voting on consolidation plans, these vestigial penalties will not create the sought after efficiencies. Consolidation should stand or fall on its own financial merit and the impact on the quality of education.
4. Provide for the option to withdraw from RSUs and AOSs at any time in order to pursue more productive district administrative arrangements.
Marriages are healthier and more productive when they continue by mutual agreement rather than life time jail sentences.
5. Provide separate state subsidy calculations for member districts by enacting the language contained in LD#160, held over from last session.
This would provide the necessary information which units need to allocate subsidy accurately and would likely encourage additional new consolidated districts.
6. Allow districts a local option to trim administrative expenses by eliminating the law’s general requirement for both a budget meeting and a budget validation referendum.
The budget validation referendum has created unnecessary expenses for cities and towns and has not attracted meaningful voter participation.
7. Examine the “one collective bargaining unit” requirement for RSUs and AOSs to determine if alternative collective bargaining procedures can be enacted.
We understand that $137 million or more will be reduced from “General Purpose Aid to Education” from FY 08-09 to FY 10-11. It is an unrealistic expectation to ask the newly formed RSUs to level up salaries and benefits in these economic times and in the face of such drastic subsidy reductions. This one issue is the primary reason why more districts did not consolidate, and this one issue will cause the most problems as implementation of consolidation moves forward.
The MCSS will also recommend any changes made to the consolidation law be open to a public hearing and that legislation be enacted not later rhan January 29, 2010.
