Appropriations Subcommittee’s School Consolidation Plan
[From the Maine Municipal Association's Legislative Bulletin for April 13, 2007]
The next stage in the development of a school consolidation plan to be presented to the Legislature as part of the proposed state budget (LD 499) is nearly completed.
The plan was developed by a subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, which presented its work product to the full Appropriations Committee on Monday this week.
The subcommittee’s plan is very similar in both structure and approach to Governor Baldacci’s original school consolidation plan. Under the Governor’s original plan, there would be only 26 school districts in the state a year from now. Under the subcommittee’s plan there would be 80.
Anyone interested in obtaining the text of the subcommittee’s proposal should contact MMA’s Laura Veilleux at 1-800-452-8786 or lveilleux (at) memunorg.
Here are the details:
Abolish most existing school systems and school boards.
As was the case with the Governor’s original plan, the text of the subcommittee’s plan begins by abolishing nearly all existing school boards and school systems. The school boards and school systems that might escape being abolished are the 20 school systems that serve more than 2,500 students, but even their fate is not entirely certain. According to the plan, the last day of existence for the existing school boards and school systems is June 30, 2008. All school unions and Community School Districts, regardless of how many students they serve, would be abolished. As of July 1, 2008, all the school systems in Maine must have a single board of directors and must be called Regional School Units.
No local vote.
Like the Governor’s original plan, the subcommittee’s version begins by abolishing most school systems as of July 1, 2008 and then attempts to create the process of reconstructing new school districts between now and then. At no time under the subcommittee’s proposal will the voters within the newly created school systems be allowed a vote to ratify the creation of the new local school government they will be compelled thereafter to support.
A clear legislative prejudice can be discerned on this point. Key legislators in this process describe any local vote in the negative, as an “opt-out” vote. A local vote is more accurately described positively, as a vote of ratification. Until now, whenever new local governments have been created, there has always been a vote of ratification.
The stated reason for foregoing any local ratification process is that the state would not be able to “book” the financial savings associated with consolidation that will purportedly be created in FY 09 because local voting creates uncertainty. A trade-off is created between state budget writing protocols and the rights of local voters to ratify the creation of entirely new local governments. Under the subcommittee’s plan, the budgeting protocols trump local voting rights.
Reconstruction process.
The school system reconstruction plan in the subcommittee’s proposal is not easily described.
Department of Education Reconfigurations.
Between now and June 1, the Department of Education would develop a school reorganization plan for the state. The so-called “parameters of reorganization” would be:
• No more than 80 school districts statewide
• With limited exceptions, each district would serve at least 2,500 students
• No teachers or students can be displaced for one year
• No schools can be closed for one year
• Despite the fact that all schools, students and teachers must remain in place, and despite the fact that all existing personnel and union contracts must be honored, the reorganization must result in:
º A 5% reduction in special education expenditures
º A 5% reduction in transportation costs
º A 5% reduction in facilities and maintenance costs
Are school systems with more than 2,500 students affected?
When the subcommittee presented its plan to the full Appropriations Committee, it was emphasized during that narrative that all school systems, even those serving more than 2,500 students, would be required to participate in some sort of consolidation. The proposed statutory language, however, is not clear on that point. In fact, the “parameters” language suggests that Maine’s 20 largest school systems could rely on their size in such a way that the “consolidation” plan they would be required to submit need only show how they will meet the 5% reduced-costs requirement with respect to special education, transportation and facilities-and maintenance. Those school systems would not otherwise have to change.
Creation and Role of the Reorganization Planning Committee?
The subcommittee’s plan directs the Commissioner of the Department of Education to “provide guidelines” for the formation of Reorganization Planning Committees, which are to include representatives of the school systems, municipalities and members of the general public. The Department’s guidelines are to include the “roles and responsibilities of the reorganization committees, timelines for submission of the plan, format for reporting the reorganization plan and evaluation criteria for approval of the plan.”
Although it appears that the intention is to charge these Reorganization Planning Committees with the task of designing the reorganized school systems, neither those Committees nor the work of those Committees are mentioned again in the 44 pages of proposed new law. It is not clear when or how the reorganization planning committees would be created, or how their membership could be even formed until the new region is decided upon so their membership base could be determined. Nor is it clear what role or authority the planning committees would have vis a vis the role of the existing school boards in their final year.
As will be noted immediately below, the responsibilities for submitting various intentions and plans to the Department of Education falls on the existing school administrative units, which means their elected school boards. The only thing that is certain is that the Reorganization Planning Committees can’t be elected to that position, because there is no time for that.
Existing School Boards Responsibilities – Phase I.
Between June 1 and July 31 of this year, the existing school boards must determine what reconfigured school system they want to belong to, and submit that intention in writing to the Department of Education. If various school boards not contained within a Department of Education configuration are somehow able within that 60-day window to develop an alternative reconfiguration not proposed by the Department (an alternative configuration that would, by definition, upset all the other contiguous, Department-prescribed reconfigurations), that alternative plan would have to meet all the “parameters” and be approved by the Department. In any event, all submissions of “intent to reconfigure” would be finally approved or disapproved by the Department by August 15.
Existing School Boards Responsibilities – Phase II.
Between August 15 and November 15, the school boards would have to develop a full-scale consolidation plan for the intended new “regional school unit”. The plan includes:
• The merging school systems
• The size, composition and apportionment of the school board
• Method of voting of the school board
• The disposition of real and personal school property
• The disposition of existing debt
• The assignment of all personnel, labor and other contracts
• The disposition of existing school funds
• A plan for the development of the FY 09 budget
• Proof that public hearings were actually held to review the consolidation plan
That fully developed plan must be submitted to the Department of Education for approval by November 15th. A quick game of ping-pong is built into the law for disapproved plans to be quickly patched-up and resubmitted, but by December 31st, a plan for each new regional school unit must be approved by the Department.
Role of the State Board of Education.
The State Board of Education has two roles:
(1) After the Department of Education approves the consolidation plan, the State Board of Education certifies the existence of each new school district. As stated above, the local voters never cast a ballot as to whether they support the creation of this new local government. The State Board of Education does that on the voters’ behalf.
(2) The State Board is also authorized to unilaterally merge any noncompliant school system into a regional school unit. A school system would be noncompliant by either not submitting a plan within the required timeframe or submitting a plan that is not approved by the Department of Education. Under this plan, all newly created school administrative units will be certified into existence by the State Board of Education no later than January 15, 2008.
Mandatory budget adoption process.
As was the case with the Governor’s original plan, the subcommittee’s plan calls for all school systems to adopt their budgets in accordance with the so-called “budget validation” process. The “budget validation” process was enacted in 2000 as a process that school communities could adopt if they wished. It provided some local-control to the voters in school districts. In the Governor’s original proposal and now in the subcommittee’s plan, it is being mandated.
The way the budget validation process works, all school budgets would have to be formatted in a certain way, separated according to prescribed cost-center categories such as “instruction”, “instructional support”, “leadership” (a.k.a., administration), “operations”, “transportation”, “special education”, etc.
In the first step of the process, the school budget is presented to the voters in an open meeting. After debate and discussion in the town-meeting format, a school budget of some kind is ultimately adopted. (Apparently, in the non-regionalized municipal school systems with more than 2,500 students that have a city council as the legislative body, the city council would act as the open town meeting.)
In all school systems, however, whether big city or rural school districts, no more than 10 working days after that open meeting, the budget must be ratified through a required referendum process. Each town or city will have to conduct a school budget referendum, with a ballot reading something to the effect of: “Do you favor approving the school budget that was adopted at the open (or city council) meeting on such-and-such a day?”
The voters in no individual municipality within the region would have a veto on the budget, but if a majority of the voters within the entire regional school unit voted the budget down, the school board would have to re-present a budget to the open meeting and then schedule another referendum vote, and so forth until a budget is ultimately adopted at referendum.
There seems to be an intense interest by the both the Governor’s Office and a certain group of legislators to mandate referendum voting for all school budgets, regardless of the voting procedures that people have adopted on the local level. As everyone knows, the voters are already empowered to require referendum voting on all school budgets, and about 50% of the SADs and a dozen school budgets at the municipal level are adopted that way, but under the plan adopted by the Appropriations subcommittee, any local decision-making about that process would be preempted.
Assets relinquished, debt retained.
And as also was the case with the Governor’s original proposal, the subcommittee’s plan would empower the newly created regional school units to take whatever existing school property the new school boards felt was necessary to fulfill their mission, and the municipal officers or expiring school boards (i.e., the legal stewards of the public property) would be compelled to sign away their community’s interests in that property. The new directors of the regional school units, however, would not be obligated to accept any of the underlying debt service associated with the school property unless that debt was to be 100% reimbursed by the state for “state supported” construction. So-called “local-only” debt could be left with the local municipality or the expired school system even after the school property is taken by the larger region. The apparent background for this “we’ll take the house, but you keep the mortgage” system is that the bond holders require the original providers of “full faith and credit” to remain on the hook unless and until the borrowed capital is expressly refinanced and the debt obligations pledged to a different entity.
Remainder issues.
There are numerous other issues embedded within the 44 pages of law being proposed by the subcommittee, including:
• Establishing the new school board. As also provided in the Governor’s original plan, the subcommittee’s proposal mandates a “joint meeting of all the municipalities within the regional school unit” to determine the size of the new school board and, apparently, to determine how those new school board directors will be elected – either (1) at large, or (2) by evenly populated voting districts, or (3) by individual municipality but with population-weighted votes. The structural protocols and decision making process associated with a “joint meeting of the municipalities” is left to the imagination.
• Minimum mill rate expectation. The subcommittee’s draft requires any municipality with no students to financially participate in the regional school unit of which it is a part with a financial contribution equal to 2 mills of effort. The first establishment of a so-called “minimum mill rate expectation”.
• Cost sharing. The cost-sharing arrangement among the municipalities participating in a school district with respect to the required local financial contribution is already dictated by state law, but the required cost-sharing of each municipality’s contribution over-and-above the required local share is up to the participating communities to negotiate. The subcommittee’s plan would require the apportionment of the local share that is being contributed above the EPS model be cost-shared in the same apportionment as the required local share contributions are apportioned unless the participating municipalities’ contributions are otherwise governed by a private and special act of the Legislature.
• Advisory councils. As also provided in the Governor’s original plan, the subcommittee’s plan authorizes the school boards of the new regional school units to create citizen “advisory councils” to provide advice to the regional school unit’s board of directors. The authorization of the advisory councils is an apparent attempt to address the complaint that larger school districts will dilute the impact of local, community based input into the regional decision making system; that regional boards could run roughshod over the interests of smaller participating municipalities. No legislative authority is required, however, to permit a school board to create an advisory council.