The state Board of Education is rolling out a controversial report authored by state leaders that calls for reducing the number of school districts from 286 to 35 and paying teachers more money while requiring them to be better educated.
It also calls for increasing the time teachers and most students spend in school; putting a laptop in every child’s hand, starting in grade-5; and, getting more high school graduates in Maine to go to college by subsidizing part of their tuition.
The report was written by leaders in the political and educational arena including former Gov. Angus King; David Flanagan, the retired CEO of Central Maine Power; the current Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron; and, former University of Maine Chancellor Robert Woodbury.
Board of Education Chairman Jim Carignan, who was on the special committee along with several other board members, said something has to be done to make school districts better and more efficient, given rising costs and falling enrollment.
“Inevitably the demographics are going to make it impossible for some school districts to continue to function as they are now,” said Carignan, a retired dean at Bates College.
The report pulls no punches. In the introduction it says:
“Maine’s schools are the eighth most expensive in the nation with declining student numbers; too many young people are not meeting reasonable standards of competence. Maine’s record for college going is beginning to lag other countries. The state still ties school schedules to an agricultural economy and very local agendas. Maine does not support teachers to reasonable expectations of professional development.”
Cutting at the top
While the report is full of provocative comments, the most controversial aspect is expected to be the combining of school districts or school administrative units and elimination of some of the current 152 superintendent positions and administrative staff.
“We’re not talking about closing schools,” Carignan said, although “that will happen over time,” given declining enrollments.
While the report talks about the efficiency of schools with no less than 350 students for elementary and middle-school aged children and 450 for high schools, its most immediate target is the administrative costs needed to support 286 school districts. The 35 recommended by the special committee would be the same number as the state Senate districts, which are based on population.
According to statistics cited in the report:
• There are 734 students on average per district compared to a national average of 3,177.
• In 2001-2002, Maine had one administrator per 393 students versus the national average of one per 816.
• Maine’s public school system has one full-time educator per 6.2 students – making it second among the 50 states.
If the state followed the national norm in terms of ratios, the report says, it could save $270 million a year – a number the report says is unrealistic given the geography of the state, but indicative of the resources that could be “redirected” to make improvements in the system.
Dale Douglass, director of the Maine School Management Association representing superintendents and school boards, expects opposition from his members when the plan is officially unveiled at a state Board of Education meeting this week.
“What I think people are going to say is yes there should be discussion of regionalization and consolidation,” Douglass said, but the proposed 35 districts “is not a helpful starting point.”
“What that would mean is we would have school systems in Maine of approximately 6,000 (students) each. There’s only one that large now, and that’s Portland,” he said. “It would mean school districts with school boards that would either be very large or you would guarantee that some municipalities would not have representation on those boards.”
Commissioner Gendron said the report was designed to be “a catalyst for conversation.”
“We want to sustain our small schools in our communities,” she said. “Well there’s a cost for that.”
In order to find the money to keep Maine’s small schools, savings have to be achieved in administration. As for the 35 districts proposed in the report, she said, “It’s a target that I think is a number we should investigate further…. Is it 35? What is the right number?”
Boosting teacher pay
One area where money saved could be redirected is in teacher salaries. The report says Maine ranks 35th in the nation in terms of average teacher salaries and 47th in beginning teacher salaries.
“The level of compensation for Maine teachers is a major impediment to attracting and retaining superior teachers,” the report says. “Of equal concern is a compensation structure that treats all teachers the same rather than rewarding teachers on a basis of performance as measured in part by student learning and the nature of responsibilities.”
The report recommends:
• increasing starting salaries and basing future raises, in part, on performance
• financial incentives for hard-to-fill fields like math, science, foreign language and special education
• creating one state bargaining unit for all teachers and school personnel to eliminate unfair compensation inequities across the state.
At the same time, better pay would allow the state to raise its teaching standards. The report recommends all teachers must get a master’s degree in education or their specific field within 10 years of entering the profession or achieve national certification – a more rigorous testing process than state certification.
Teachers would be asked to pay 25 percent of their master’s education, with the rest shared by the state and the school district.
Rob Walker, president of the Maine Education Association, the union representing the state’s teachers, agrees teacher pay needs to be raised, but is against pay for performance.
“It creates a system of haves and have-nots – a system that actually demoralizes the teaching staff,” he said. It is also the first thing to go when the administration, either on the union or management side, changes or budgets get tight.
He also is opposed to longer school years without the commensurate pay. “A lot of these proposals say, ‘let’s just add on time and not compensate for it,'” Walker said.
Walker believes there is room for some consolidation of school districts, particularly in northern Maine and Downeast, where enrollments are dropping most quickly.
“If they’re looking for it, there’s some natural opportunities to squeeze some districts into some consolidation simply because of loss of student population,” he said, but “35 seems pretty arbitrary to me.”
He also agreed that some consolidation of teachers’ bargaining units was possible, if it allowed lower-paying districts to hook up with higher-paying ones, but there would be problems with just one for the whole state, as suggested in the report.
“There’s too many differences from top to bottom,” he said, and it wouldn’t be right to ask “locals from the southern part of the state…to hold their teachers static while people in the depressed areas catch up.”
The report also calls for a change in Maine’s mentality about preparing and encouraging children to go to college.
“It is the $1 million choice – the estimated average earning difference over a lifetime between a holder of a high school diploma and the recipient of a college degree,” the report says.
To help pay for that education, the report proposes:
• the state will open a mutual fund account with an initial contribution of $200 for every child born in Maine, redeemable as tuition for post-secondary education.
• tuition help equal to half tuition for two years computed at the average tuition of the Community College System for students with financial need.
The Board of Education, which is just now formally introducing the report to educators and legislators, advises the commissioner of education and makes recommendations to the Legislature. It has responsibility in several areas including the formation of school districts and cooperation among districts; requirement for accreditation of schools; and rules surrounding school construction projects eligible for state aid.
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