Area educators air concerns over restructuring plan

     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.
“In Maine, we spend $2,000 more per pupil than the national average and pay our teachers $7,000 less than the national average,” said Baldacci. “My initiative will keep local schools open, boost classroom resources and enhance local oversight. My plan benefits the right people … the children.”
Lucy Richard, chair of the SAD 1 school board, told the governor and Education Commissioner Gendron that Aroostook County is already a leader in the area of regionalization.
“SAD 1 belongs to a collaborative of five surrounding school systems and the University of Maine called CACE (Central Aroostook Council on Education),” said Richard. “We have worked together to save money over the last 10 years in the areas of food purchasing, purchase of school supplies, purchase of paper, heating fuel, and professional development opportunities for 525 teachers.
“Our superintendent, Dr. Gehrig T. Johnson, also handles superintendent duties for the Bridgewater School Department and SAD 32 in Ashland,” she said. “He serves 30 board members and 14 communities spread 75 miles apart from Bridgewater to Portage.”
In the area of transportation, Richard told Baldacci that the district is already “employing the regionalization concept you are proposing in LSRS.”
“In 2002, SAD 1 built a $1.1 million state-of-the-art bus garage, and presently handles all service and maintenance for the Maine School of Science & Mathematics, the Bridgewater, Limestone and Washburn school departments; Micmac Preschool, Maliseet Preschool, and does all warranty work for Aroostook and Washington counties for Freightliner and Blue Bird buses,” she said.
“The point that I’m trying to make is that school systems are already collaborating to save money in Aroostook County … in fact, we are leading the way,” said Richard. “History shows that forced collaboration does not work. Local control is very important to me. I cannot support LSRS as written because I feel it erodes local control by eliminating over 70 school board members in Aroostook County and forces communities into partnerships they don’t want.”
Under the Initiative, budget authority shifts to the new regional boards on July 1, 2008. Existing school boards would remain in effect during a transition period to work with schools on creating an advisory structure to strengthen community participation in local schools. These “local advisory councils” would include parents, teachers, and others and could be school-level councils or community-level councils, depending on what is decided locally.
SAD 1 director Paul Saija said he’s a fan of regionalization, but also a fan of local control.
“My problem is the timeframe which is being proposed,” he said. “It’s a very tight timeline … very ambitious. Maybe you can relax the time-table a bit.”
“Unfortunately,” said Baldacci, “if we don’t have deadlines, we won’t have people working toward them.”
Sheila Lyons, school board member in SAD 32, said her community is equally concerned about “giving up local control.”
“Our schools are the center of our community,” she said. “We’re excited about building a new school, but people are worried about not having any control running it.”
A number of educators expressed concerns about smaller schools closing under Baldacci’s plan.
“We don’t want to close schools,” the governor said, “because we have too much invested in them including broadband Internet connections.”
The legislation includes a safety net that allows a local community – on its own – to override a decision by a regional board to close a school. If the residents of the city or town vote to keep the school open, and are willing to pay the difference between the cost of running the school or sending those students to another school in the district, they can keep it open, even against the vote of the region. The additional cost typically is not significant, amounting to heat and maintenance and some other costs.
According to literature handed out at the governor’s stop at PIHS, the $241 million in projected savings goes far beyond superintendent salaries alone. In the first year of implementation alone, officials project:
• $41 million savings by reducing the per-student allocation for system administration from $348 to $186. This includes salaries for superintendents, business managers, secretarial staff, curriculum, software, computers, rent, and office maintenance.
• $5.5 million through more efficient bus routes, bulk purchasing of fuel and parts, and co-locating for repair and maintenance of buses, as well as administrative costs.
• $12 million in facilities and maintenance through administrative reorganization, purchasing, and energy control efficiencies currently implemented in some systems to be applied across the regions.
• $14 million in special education by employing occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech clinicians, psychological evaluators, and others who were previously contracted.
Despite some peoples’ concerns, Baldacci said things “weren’t going to stay the same.”
“The existing education model was created in 1957, and things need to change,” he said. “If you were to design a system, you wouldn’t do it this way.”
Roger Shaw, superintendent of SAD 42 in Mars Hill, said, “While this plan would not close schools, we have to be careful that we don’t end up with unintended results.”
“We need to make sure we don’t undertake an experiment that we can’t turn the clocks back on,” he said. “I don’t want communities to lose the centers of their life.”
Earlier in the morning, Baldacci and Gendron spoke to members of the Aroostook Partners for Progress, Leaders Encouraging Aroostook Development (LEAD), and members of various chambers of commerce at an Eggs N’ Issues held at Northern Maine Community College. Baldacci also spoke to students at PIHS before going to Fort Kent for another stop on their listening tour.