SAD 16 blasts Baldacci's school plan
Kennebec Journal, January 12, 2007

(excerpt) According to the letter: "This is a top-down plan being pushed without any recognition of local wishes or of any steps individual districts, such as SAD 16, have made on their own to consolidate and improve administrative operating efficiencies."

SAD 16 board member Tom Austin said the governor's plan needs to be thought through more carefully, but that the SAD 16 board was afraid a review would not be allowed before legislators considered it as a budget item this year.

SAD 16 officials said the letter will be sent to Sen. Earle McCormick, R-West Gardiner, and Rep. Sharon Treat, D-Farmingdale, and possibly published in the media.

If the governor's proposal is approved, SAD 16 students would be in the same district as many other students in southern Kennebec County towns, including Augusta, Readfield, Winthrop and Chelsea, Austin said.

He said consolidating school activities is nothing new. The idea has been floating around for a while.

"We've had quite a bit of success with this," Austin said Thursday. "For example, we share a lot of the office services with Dresden, our office does all the accounting and reporting for both districts, and we share a special ed director with a number of districts.

"These are the things the governor seems to envision, but the plan is too drastic a move."

Board member Dan Shagoury worries SAD 16's cost-sharing -- such as buying oil cooperatively with the city of Hallowell, sharing services with municipalities and accepting tuition students from Dresden -- would be undone by the governor's plan.

"We've been working closely with Dresden. We have a contract with them for middle school and, now, high school students," Shagoury said. "Is that all going to be severed?"

Shagoury said he strongly believes the proposal for reorganizing the school system should be a separate bill, not buried in the state budget.

Click on the post title to read the whole article.

Take note too of the comments. There's an interesting piece of citizen reporting here:

I listened carefully to Gendron's reply to Fred Bever's question about the background research done on this type of consolidation yesterday on MPR.

Her answer was a shocking revelation of no research into the many failed and some successful experiments into consolidation in the U.S.; and overwhelming reliance on the Canadian Provincial administration of public education.

Even a quick look at the organizational structure of the New Brunswick Department of Education and their way of totally paying for the operation of the schools in the nine districts, reveals a vast difference between Maine and New Brunswick's nearly socialized structure.

The province of New Brunswick totally controls nearly every aspect of education and running schools at the local level.

The districts range in size from Moncton with 16,508 students and 1,055 educators; down to Dalhousie with 3,982 students and 282 educators.
Overall enrollment in New Brunswick schools has dropped steadily over the past few decades to the current level of 120,600.

The consolidation actually began in 1967 with the elimination of counties and their replacement by the provincial government as the principal agent of local administration. Local school districts were consolidated and many functions incorporated into the Provincial department of government.

The Maine legislature would have to greatly increase the power of Gendron's department and abolish the many types of local school units--SAD
's, SAU's, CSAD's, and more importantly, school departments which are imbedded in Town Charters.

The other huge difference is that Maine's administration at the state and local level has changed dramatically with the acceptance of Federal funds in the late Sixties and up to NCLB and many other programs. There appears to be little federal presence in the education Dept. of the Province of New Brunswick.