· The Downeast Coastal Press, March25-31, 2008

· Machias-Area RPC Gets Update on Schools Law

By Will Tuell

When the Machias-area Regional Planning Committee (RPC) met March 17 at Elm Street School in East Machias to discuss the group’s progress on implementing Maine’s school reorganization law, the state Senate had not voted on legislation geared at reworking some of the more controversial elements of the original legislation passed last June as part of the state’s two-year budget.

As Chairman John Sprague pointed out at the onset, the group had been on hiatus for nearly two months while legislators negotiated the finer points of a suite of amendments geared at “fixing” what many see as a broken law.

“Last time we met was January 8,” said Sprague, a retired teacher, “and we decided at that time that we would not bother to meet until the state got their act together or we knew where we could go.” He soon introduced Union 102 Superintendent Scott Porter and East Machias selectman Kenneth “Bucket” Davis, who briefed the RPC on their lobbying and monitoring efforts in Augusta.

Porter said that because of “pressure back home,” legislators have waged a protracted fight against the Baldacci administration’s efforts to keep “super unions” out of LD 1932, a bill that they originally advanced to address financial inequities in the original law, but that required two-thirds support from both chambers in order to be enacted immediately upon passage.

Porter said that he, Dick Gould, the executive director of the Maine Small Schools Coalition, and Mount Desert Island RPC member Brian Hubbell met for about 30 minutes with the governor the week before to discuss school governance issues.

“The governor’s stance,” said Porter, “is that there are too many school districts [and] he wants to keep it at 80.” Porter added, “My comment to him was that if you don’t give us an alternative like a regional school union, you’ll have far more than 80 units in the state. ... There are 34 school unions in the state, 131 towns. I would daresay that at least 50-60 of those towns are going to vote not to do it [consolidate]. If you vote that way, you’re your own unit. So, when you add that to the other units, you’ve got far more than 80. You could have 120 or so.”

Veto Has Own Risks

 “The commissioner [of education] needs LD 1932 to get through because it allows negotiated cost-sharing formulas,” said Porter. “Right now, the law tells you how you spread out the additional local. That’s why you see some places that have huge cost swings. Some places will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars more [to consolidate] and some will pay less. The cost shifting is happening statewide.”

Porter outlined how the law, as proposed by Sen. Dennis Damon (D-Trenton) and Rep. Bruce MacDonald (D-Boothbay), would allow area communities to function as they have while consolidating administrative services, the rationale originally given for consolidation.

“You could put an SAD along with a municipal school unit and school union under that [regional school union] umbrella, and you cost-share the services under that central office, and you have your own budget, you approve your own budget with your own additional local, your own policies, and it operates very much like a school union does today. ... It wouldn’t be a regional school unit with one school committee overseeing the whole thing. [Instead,] it would be a regional school union, and you’d have a joint committee that is an overseer of the central office, like it is today in a school union, [but] you’d still have your individual school committees doing your own budget, hiring your own people, doing your own programs.”

Porter offered details about an amendment advanced by Sen. Kevin Raye (R-Perry) and Rep Benjamin Pratt (D-Eddington) addressing later adjustments. Their amendment, he said, “allows for the dissolution of regional school units, the withdrawal from a regional school unit by a municipality, and the transfer by a municipality out of one RSU into another” should circumstances change among towns over time. Under the original Baldacci bill, there is little opportunity for municipalities to make adjustments should they so desire.

“I do believe that we have made a big difference,” said East Machias selectman Kenneth “Bucket” Davis, who serves as the RPC vice chairman. “They know us very well. They know our faces. A lot of our legislators truly don’t understand how this works. They really don’t know. The commissioner gets up there, she explains to them, and they just take it for granted. They don’t see the hidden things.”

RPC Weighs Next Moves

“There’s probably not a lot of sense to do a lot of work until the Legislature makes a decision,” said Porter. “Then, you have to look at whether it goes in immediately or 90 days later. At any rate, MDI has already crafted a plan for a regional school union. I think it would be beneficial for us if we move in that direction in the future. You have to do a reorganization plan. There’s no way to get around it, whether you do an RSU, a regional school union, you have to do one. And then, the town has the opportunity to vote it up or down.”

Raye’s second amendment, which would have allowed towns to leave the planning process, failed to generate enough legislative support.

“Kevin Raye’s amendment didn’t make it through the gate,” said Porter. “So we have to craft something.” He said that the Machias-area RPC plan would have to differ from MDI’s plan somewhat, because MDI has a shared regional high school.

“If we did something it wouldn’t be identical because their high school situation is different. They collectively have a CSD high school. We don’t have that. So, I’m convinced we would want to get some of their work, take a look at their approach so we don’t have to recreate everything. At the end of it, we’ll want to add to that, customize it to what we look like, and eventually have an attorney involved in that whole process to make sure that we’ve done it correctly.”

Davis: Issue a Political Loser for Democrats

Davis reminded the committee that all is not yet cast in concrete. “There’s a possibility the governor vetoes this,” he said. “And, you know something, I hope he does. Because if he does, he doesn’t win either. That means nothing happens. He doesn’t get what he wants. We just keep doing what we’re doing. Eventually they’re going to suck everybody into this, and if everyone would’ve got together and stuck with this, we would’ve got the signatures and got this mess repealed.”

“Some of you folks will probably be mad with my statement,” continued Davis, “and I could care less. You’ve got the Democrats who got you into this mess, and now they’re trying to dig themselves out, and they’re looking for the Republicans to help them. I don’t care what party you’re in, they need to work together because this is unfair to the taxpayers of the state of Maine.”

Ed White, a committee member from Jonesboro, agreed with Porter’s advice on how to proceed. “I think Scott has pointed us in the right direction,” he said. “I don’t believe we should go through all of this mess of paper until we see what they’re doing. Let’s look at this super-union structure. Maybe we could use some of it, maybe we don’t need it. But let’s look at it. Then I think we can craft something for us.”

“I don’t think we ought to do anything until the government decides what they want,” said Sprague. “Once they settle down, we can work within that. If we don’t like that, we’ll just fight ‘em.”

The Machias-area RPC includes representatives from Union 102 (Jonesboro, Machias, Marshfield, Northfield, Roque Bluffs, Whitneyville, and Wesley), Union 134 (Cutler, Whiting and Machiasport), SAD 19 (Lubec) and the municipal school department of East Machias which shares administrative services with Union 102.