Education officials say a new law would have to be written that gives communities a way to withdraw from a district they may already have joined. Some legislators say a deconsolidation law could be as complicated as the statute it would replace.
A few months ago, Norm Higgins, a consultant with the Maine Department of Education began surveying school superintendents across the state to find out how they were planning their school year.
“To a person, they told me they were all waiting for the referendum," he said.
Higgins told members of the Legislature’s Education Committee that the looming state reductions in education spending and the uncertainty posed by the possible repeal of the consolidation law have raised the overall anxiety level for school administrators.
“What I heard to a person out there is their concern about what the impact that this will have on their school systems,” Higgins said. “Sometimes we forget that, we think about the nuts and bolts and governance and politics, local control and all those issues, but I have to tell you, a number of people said I didn't get in this business to have to cut programs, I got in this business because I wanted to do good things for kids."
Approved in 2007 as part of Gov. John Baldacci's state budget, the school consolidation law was supposed to reduce the number of school districts from 290 down to just 80 and save on administrative costs. Compliance with the complicated consolidation procedure has generally been easier for large school districts than it has for smaller systems, which tend to draw small numbers of students from Maine's large rural areas. Local control, transportation, school debt and the quality of education were flash points among many communities. Dozens of towns have still not conformed to the law.
And now, in November, voters will be asked to repeal the consolidation law. If that happens, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron says the Legislature will have to give those communities that want to leave their districts with a way out.
“We would need to work with the Legislature to create what I'm calling bridging language so that they could convert to a school administrative unit, a community school district or a school union which are old structures that would be restored if there was a repeal vote,” she said.
Gendron says 84 percent of Maine's school children are already in conforming districts and that the vast majority of those communities would be reluctant to dismantle the systems that required so much effort to create. But if the law is repealed and communities want to find another option, their choices may be difficult. Gendron says that it many cases, there are real estate mergers and an array of joint financial agreements that would have to be revised.
“That's where it gets complicated,” Gendron said. “Many of these buildings and properties have been merged under these new systems. The whole fiscal operations have been merged. They're in the process right now of looking at their whole educational programs. They're making decisions about how they support best practices or not."
The next session of the Legislature won’t begin until January, but state Sen. Elizabeth Schneider, an Orono Democrat, says her fellow committee members will face an accelerated timetable if voters opt to repeal the law. Schneider says lawmakers have an obligation to provide a legal way out for schools that choose a different path.
“Clearly there's going to be a lot of work that’s going to have to be done in a very short period of time in order to give schools the choice of what they want to do,” Schneider said. “We have to make that legal for them to do that to move in a direction which they so choose. Communities are going to need to have a weigh-in on that. And, yeah, it's going to take significant bridging legislation.">
Should voters choose to repeal the law, the Legislature would have 45 days to craft the necessary legislation needed to allow communities to opt out of consolidation.