Education panel backs consolidation changes

Saturday, January 12, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

AUGUSTA, Maine — After hours of discussion and debate, all but one member of the Legislature’s Education Committee voted Friday in support of legislation aimed at reducing barriers to school administration consolidation.
"We have a few things left, technical stuff," said Rep. Jackie Norton, D-Bangor, the House chairman of the committee. "We did ask the commissioner to come back with some appeal language on Tuesday."

Norton said a significant change gives the education commissioner flexibility in accepting school administrative units of fewer than 1,200 students. The existing law sets a minimum size of 1,200 with no exceptions.

Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said that change and others approved by the panel improve the law and she will recommend that Gov. John Baldacci support them.

"What this does is to bring clarity to the law," she said. "It also recognizes some of the geographical isolation that there is in the state of Maine."
Gendron said there are several areas of the state that will benefit from the change. She said communities in Washington, Aroostook and Somerset counties have proposed districts that fall just short of the 1,200 minimum.

"They have tried hard to come up with partners, but the numbers are not there," she said. "The law does talk about geography, density, unique characteristics."

Panel members asked Gendron to draft language that will allow a proposed school unit to appeal a decision by the education commissioner. While the panel wants an appeal mechanism, members were not sure how it should work. Gendron said the amendment would set up the State Board of Education as the appeal agency.

"All the appeals now in the department from a decision the commissioner makes in the department go to the state board," she said. "I think once the committee sees that, they will decide the board should handle appeals."

Rep. Peter Edgecomb, R-Caribou, was the dissenting vote. He said his minority report would include the amendments approved by the committee with the addition of his proposal, which would allow "USA plans" as school administrative units. Union school administrative units, Edgecomb argued, would provide more local control than the school administrative units in the current law.

The panel adopted several changes to the bill originally proposed by Gendron. One section clarifies the budget meeting process that must be used to approve the budgets of the new school administrative units.

Another section establishes the way the referendum process works for the approval of school unit budgets, no matter the form of the school administrative unit. It allows a referendum process but does not mandate a referendum.

Regional school unit boards have their roles and responsibilities more clearly spelled out under another section added to the legislation. It also expands the scope of the units to include both elementary and secondary schools.

The amendments also include changing a number of dates in the current law to reflect the fact that many new school administrative units will not be formed in time to meet the deadlines in the current law.

"From my reading so far of the amendments, I do not see any increase in costs," Gendron said. "I don’t see that as a problem."

Senate Majority Leader Libby Mitchell, D-Vassalboro, who serves on the committee, said the package approved by the panel is "the whole enchilada" and includes changes to the current law dealing with cost sharing, minimum state allocation and mill rates.

"It’s critically important people understand this is a comprehensive package of changes," she said.

After the committee votes on the few remaining technical changes and appeal language next Tuesday, it hopes to get the final emergency bill to the full Legislature as soon as possible.

Norton said the issues around consolidation are not partisan in nature. She said they are geographical and that all four party caucuses in the Legislature will have supporters and opponents of school consolidation.

"I don’t know how these will be received," she said of the changes. "We hope this takes away a lot of the barriers to consolidation that we have heard about."