Easton School Department opposes school reorganization

     According to a resolution that was unanimously approved by Easton’s five school board directors last Monday night, while the Easton School Department “supports well planned efforts to encourage the efficient delivery of educational services through cooperation among school units, regional delivery of specific administrative functions, and educationally sound school unit consolidation,” the board opposes the governor’s Local Schools, Regional Support (LSRS) Initiative for a number of reasons.
Superintendent Frank Keenan said the number-one issue is the plan’s “attack of local control.”
“Having it dictated from the state that individual communities will be forced to give up their authority of running their own local school systems is our biggest concern … but it’s not our only concern,” he said. “The logistics of it … looking at the size and magnitude of what the governor is trying to do, the timelines – from everyone’s perspective that I’ve talked to – are way too short in order to do a thorough and effective job no matter what kind of system they’re transitioning to.”
The LSRS Initiative aims to shift the focus from administration to the classroom to achieve excellence in education for all Maine students by keeping local schools local and consolidating central office administration.
The plan would create 26 regional learning communities, each with a board of directors, superintendent, and other central office personnel. The initiative would result in 26 regional budgets, teacher contracts and school calendars, rather than the 290 existing school administrative units.
Among the benefits of the LSRS Initiative, according to Baldacci, include increased teacher salaries and expanded professional development opportunities for teachers, expansion of the laptop computer initiative, proposed scholarships for students to attend higher education, and $241 million in savings that translates into property tax relief over three years.
Another question raised by the Easton board is whether there are truly any savings associated with the governor’s plan at all.
“The $250 million in projected administrative cost savings being used to promote the governor’s plan are not real,” the resolution reads. “They are based on unsupported assumptions and unreliable data; the potential savings in administrative costs are being greatly exaggerated.”
“The figures that we are working from are basically estimates done on changing multipliers and it’s not listings of all of the jobs that are going to be removed and those that are going to be left, so you can actually look at it, add it up, and see where in fact the savings would come, if any,” said Keenan. “When you look back at consolidation in the late 1950s and 1960s, the process actually cost more in the first few years because there was a whole lot of money infused into the bringing together of schools into new districts … money that was needed to make those schools all be on the same page.”
Other reasons cited in the resolution include:
• The boundaries of the 26 regions are not consistent with educational excellence, good governance or cost effective administration; some regions have too many students, some include too many towns, and others involve unreasonable distances; the proposed regions are not well suited to Maine’s students’ educational needs.
• The process employed by the governor and the Department of Education in designing this proposal has not been sufficiently inclusive; it has been too top down and has been marked by inadequate preparation and lack of attention to detail.
• The governor’s proposal is not fair to long-standing school employees whose jobs will be eliminated without any severance.
“Our board is always looking to be as efficient as possible,” said Keenan, “and they certainly are not opposed to being part of a process that looks at finding ways to collaborate to save dollars in the areas of administrative costs and would welcome the opportunity to participate in that … they simply want it to be structured in a way that does not take away their decision-making process to control their local schools.
“I think there are a myriad of proposals out there that don’t do that … that are trying to get at the same savings the governor’s trying to get at, but doing it without pulling the rug out from under the local school boards from around the state,” he said. “Let us participate as a board representing this community. If you want to set targets and timelines, we will work with those groups to meet them, but don’t take away the local control.”
A copy of the resolution is being sent to Sen. Roger Sherman (R-Houlton) and Rep. Jackie Lundeen (D-Mars Hill) with the hope, according to Keenan, “they will listen and not do anything that is going to undermine the local control of schools in their district.”