The Downeast Coastal Press, April 22-28, 2008

Senators Wrangle over School Consolidation Vote

Opponents Lament Partisan, Late-Session Tactics

By Will Tuell

Four and a half months after it began considering legislation to address flaws associated with Maine’s school reorganization law, state senators sparred over the merits of a package of “fixes” advanced by Gov. John Baldacci and Education Commissioner Susan Gendron before ultimately adopting the bill, LD 2323, April 18. The law, as passed, did not allow for a “super-union” governance structure, one that would have permitted more local control over a town’s school. While incorporating some flexibility, by removing the two-mill minimum for local education spending, for example, the law also gives more discretionary power to Gendron, including allowing her to approve units not meeting the 1,200-minimum student population.

“Supporting this measure leaves in place many of the most onerous and unworkable provisions of the law that was passed last year,” said Sen. Kevin Raye (R-Perry), rebuking his colleagues for not standing behind a school union form of governance. “This is going to have disastrous consequences in rural areas of the state. I’m extremely disappointed. There are a few nibbles around the edges, [but] the significant changes the people of Maine had hoped for are not in this bill.”

Sen. Roger Sherman (R-Houlton) joined Raye and 10 other senators in voting down the new legislation, accusing majority Democrats of playing the same type of politics they had accused the Bush administration of playing during a previous debate about Maine’s compliance with Real ID.

“We had a great debate yesterday when [we said] we shouldn’t let the federal government to tell us what to do, and now we come to the point [where] these chambers are telling people what they’re going to do,” said Sherman. “I don’t know how to spell the word ‘hypocrisy,’ but you can’t have it both ways. You’re telling 1.3 million people, 200,000 schoolkids, what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it, under the threat of the state of Maine.”

Sen. Walter Gooley (R-Farmington) blasted the governor’s office for its autocratic approach toward school consolidation, saying that was his biggest problem with the effort to reorganize Maine school systems. “It’s the top-down approach that has bothered me more than anything else.”

Sen. John Martin (D-Eagle Lake), who, like Sherman, represents constituents in Aroostook County, argued that the new law is anything but perfect, but that it would be an improvement over the original law. “What we did last year, what we’re doing today, is not my preference, but we have to move forward,” said Martin before casting his vote for LD 2323. “The state expects things to occur at the local level, and they have not been. We talk about a waste of money; we’ve been watching that in Aroostook County for years. If I had had my choice, it [LD 2323] would have been somewhat different than this, but we brought it upon ourselves. We have only ourselves to look at in the mirror.”

One of the loudest critics of the school reorganization process, the town of Van Buren, has strongly resisted merging with its neighbors, at one point risking the loss of its state subsidy over refusals to submit a reorganization plan to Gendron.

Sen. John Nutting (D-Leeds), who represents communities in rural Androscoggin County, broke with party leadership in objecting to the new law, arguing that over the last few years legislators have passed bills that favor larger, more urban school administrations. “To me, we’re a rural state with an urban funding formula. I don’t see how we can discuss one without discussing everything together,” Nutting said. “This bill just compounds the inequity in our school funding formula. Equity is now gone from our school [funding] formula due to the policies of this administration. That’s adversely affecting people’s attitude.”

Senate Minority Leader Carol Weston of Waldo County chronicled what she saw as broken promises on the part of the Baldacci administration in her remarks. “Nearly one year ago we sat here and passed the original school consolidation bill,” she said. “One by one people stood and said this won’t work. This has problems. Just a few months later, what we heard was we really know this isn’t working, and we are going to fix it. We were told we were going to do it the first three days. Here we are still saying this isn’t going to work, this has problems. If you want anything to succeed, you get everyone on board. You bring everyone together. This [LD 2323]  was a few people who decided how they wanted to make other people live and work, and [then] forcing it on them. That’s not the formula for success.”

Weston said that legislators who were thinking this would be the last of school consolidation would likely have to stare the issue squarely in the face next January. “I find it so disappointing saying we didn’t do it right. The 124th will still be dealing with this. My hope is that they’ll listen to parents, teachers, administrators and that there will be a coalition focused on [delivering] the best education in the most efficient way. I’ve tried to be consistent all the way through, first on education, second on efficiency. We have neither.”

Sen. Karl Turner (R-Cumberland) supported the Baldacci administration’s proposal, arguing that it would help Maine schoolchildren develop the skills needed to compete in the global economy. “Anytime you get involved in restructuring an entity, public or private, there are tensions. Once the decision is made, in the public process, all the stakeholders have an opportunity, and they exercise that fairly well. There has been fierce resistance to the changes to the law. I hope that will abate and that we get on to doing this in the most cost-effective way. Frankly, it puts us at a disadvantage in the international market. Their [international] emphasis on education is much more focused. We’ve taken a decentralized approach to government. We’re a republic, and we’ve had a lot of local control, but I don’t think it’s delivered the way we hoped it would deliver.”

Turner then urged fellow legislators to give their constituents “a dose of reality” by urging municipalities to implement the law. “Think about leading your constituents. It’s not always popular, but when you know something needs to be done, sometimes taking the popular stance isn’t the right stance. Sometimes giving the constituents a dose of reality is the best elixir for them.”

Raye rebutted, arguing that school consolidation laws have driven a wedge between rural and urban areas of the state, and have gone a long way in aggravating the “Two Maines” debate. “Many, many people from throughout rural Maine have come to the table in a constructive, open way, “ he said, taking issue with Turner’s remarks that rural areas had disengaged from the process. “When I hear the suggestion that people of rural Maine are stubbornly resistant, I would remind this body that they have participated, but have been cast aside by the [governor] and this body.”

Raye went on to hammer proponents for their lack of understanding of people who live in northern and eastern Maine. “I resent the way this has turned out in this Legislature,” he said. “We are, by what we’re about to do, driving the wedge between the Two Maines. We talk about unity. Any of us have great friendships on both sides, but I can tell you that the wedge that is being driven between rural areas and cities is devastating. It pains me. I know there are some who think we’re overreacting, but I’m telling you we’re not. When you hear those of us who’ve spoken out, it’s from the heart. We’re representing the people we were sent here by. They deserve the respect, some accommodation, so that we can maintain our traditions and communities.”

Sen. Dana Dow (R-Waldoboro) accused fellow legislators and the Baldacci administration of being untruthful with voters by denying that the goal was to close schools and cut teacher positions. “My district is rural,” he said. “We’ve suffered from the beginning. Our suffering [comes from the Legislature’s] approach on how we did it [consolidation]. We weren’t truthful with the people of the state of Maine. Quality of education was always the first sentence, but the rest of the discussion was all about money. We convinced the people, or some people convinced the people, that they were going to save money.  We should’ve been up front from the beginning, not about money, but the problems we were going to face ... with our education system.”

Heavy-Handed Approach by Gendron Predicted

Dow took his remarks a step further, saying that not only will schools be closed, but Gendron will be able to achieve consolidation only through “a club and penalties.”

“We should’ve been up front and told people that we were going to have to close schools,” said Dow. “In closing schools some teachers are going to get laid off, and those jobs aren’t going to exist. Instead of that we ran around telling people that we’re not going to close schools and lay off teachers. ... This saving money through administrative [cuts] is possible but it’s a smoke screen. We should’ve been up front and told them that. If we’d laid it out on the table, from the beginning, they would’ve come along and we’d have had a much better system. We hid it all. We kept the superintendents out of the discussion. We kept the Legislature out of the discussion.”

Dow concluded by saying that he hoped someday legislators would be up front when confronting the realities of a complex problem like school consolidation. “I’m going to hope that someday we can get back to doing this thing right [by] telling the people the truth, and letting them deal with the real issues that are out there, not the ones that we’ve manufactured and told them to look all the money they’re going to save. We’re still three to five years down the road before any savings occur.”

Sen. Peter Mills (R-Skowhegan) told fellow legislators that “we can’t use rurality as an excuse” before he cast his vote in support of LD 2323. “We have the second-lowest student-pupil ratios in the U.S.,” said Mills. “We have the eighth- or 10th-highest cost per student in the United States, yet our median income is down around 36th. We can’t use rurality as an excuse; we’ve got to face this thing head on because the marketplace is going to face it for us.”

Mills likened the situation to the Middle Ages, when the haves and have-nots became increasingly hostile toward one another, saying that if consolidation doesn’t happen, we will have the “ghettoization” of Maine. “I’m going to end with a dire prediction,” said Mills. “To the extent that consolidation doesn’t happen, we’re going to have property-rich towns behaving like rich towns in the Middle Ages. Close the gates, leave the disease out there beyond the wall. We’re going to run whatever school system we choose to run. All you scruffy little towns outside the wall, the state will dribble out some money to you. And we’ll end up with the same kinds of horribly disparate school systems that you saw in the Deep South as a product of another era. This ghettoization is here now and will get a whole lot worse.”

And so debate concluded, with 22 senators backing the governor’s proposal and 12 voting it down. The House approved the bill late the evening before, by a 92-41 margin. Governor Baldacci signed it into law following passage.