Maine ASCD Weblog

Consolidation: Latest Summary

The following summary regarding the school district consolidation plan has been floating around the internet yesterday. It is not clear who the author was, but we suspect it was generated by someone in the Maine Department of Education:

Update March 27, 2007

Background - understanding the process

Proposals

Governor Baldacci proposed the Local Schools, Regional Support Initiative in January as part of his two-year state budget proposal. The budget often contains policy pieces, especially where they are intricately tied to revenues and/or expenditures.

In late January, the Legislature’s Education and Appropriations Committees began reviewing the Governor’s proposal for school administrative restructuring, which was found in Part MM of the budget, along with the six other proposals in the Legislature for school district restructuring.

Those include legislation based on recommendations from the Maine Children’s Alliance and the State Board of Education.

Committee Process

The Appropriations Committee is responsible for reviewing the budget, adopting changes, and then presenting its recommendations to the full House and Senate. Appropriations typically asks "committees of jurisdiction" to review their portion of the budget. Judiciary to review parts of the budget affecting the courts, Agriculture to review agriculture programs, etc. Those committees, including the Education Committee, "report back" to Appropriations with their recommendations, especially around the policy pieces, but also around funding recommendations. That is why the Education Committee held a joint public hearing with the Appropriations Committee on Feb. 5 at the Augusta Civic Center seeking input from the public on the Governor’s, and the six other proposals for school administrative restructuring.

The Education Committee deliberated for more than four weeks on the bills not on the Governor’s proposal alone, but rather on finding a solution to achieve system administrative savings in the state’s school districts and would maintain or improve educational achievement in the classroom.

This goal has been shared by the Governor, the Education Committee, and virtually every speaker and participant in the legislative process.

On March 8, the Education Committee reported to the Appropriations Committee where it stood with respect to various aspects of school administrative reform, such as the minimum size of districts, a timeline for implementing consolidation and collaboration efforts, and other elements.

The Appropriations Committee appointed a subcommittee of its own, with four members, to build upon the work of the Education Committee.

Meanwhile, the Education Committee also went back to further refine its proposals, and came back to the Appropriations Committee with three versions, including a "beefed up" version of its original proposal.

What now? (Updated March 27, 2007)

The Appropriations subcommittee is aiming to finish up its recommendations this week. All items below are subject to change. Some of the issues subcommittee members are discussing:

• Minimum 2,500 students per district, with exceptions for islands, Indian schools, and "unique geographic situations." No more than 80 districts total, including those exceptions. All communities would have to be part of a regional district and cannot "opt out."
• Timeline. Committee members support a timeline that would require consolidated school administrative units to be in place by July 1, 2008.
• Consolidation. Committee members want to afford some flexibility for existing school administrative units to determine who their new partners would be, but also want to ensure that one way or another new administrative districts would be in place by July 1, 2008. The state Department of Education will develop one or more alternatives for consolidation by the school administrative units.

Process: Dept. of Education to present one or more scenarios for district match-ups for new regional districts by June 30.

• Districts have until July 31 to file intent to partner with others. DOE provides facilitators to help with implementation plans, due to DOE by Nov. 15. DOE approves by Dec. 1. Revised plans, if required, due by Dec. 31. State Board of Education certifies by Jan. 15. Elections for new school boards by March 31.
• New "regional school districts" would be structured more or less like current SAD structure. Districts that are currently larger than 2,500 students would become regional school districts. Municipal school administrative units with more than 2,500 students may remain as municipal units.
• Transparency in budgeting. Members generally want to see clear requirements for school boards to present their budget to the voters at a school district meeting, similar to a town meeting, and then to send the budget out for an up-or-down vote at referendum. The budget would have to be presented in a way that shows how proposed expenditures compare to the state-recommended funding allocations (Essential Programs and Services). Also, the committee is exploring a requirement that residents vote on whether to exceed EPS.
• Sustainability. Once state funding for local education reaches 55 percent of EPS in the 2008-2009 school year, future increases to state aid are limited by inflation and enrollment. Any long term plan must seek continuous efficiencies or severe cuts to instruction will follow.

Legislative process, continued

The Appropriations subcommittee is expected to present its recommendations to the full Appropriations Committee in the coming few days. The full Appropriations Committee will deliberate based on those recommendations.

Tentatively, the committee is scheduled to focus on bonds, not the state budget, during the last week of March. Members would take up the budget, including the school restructuring piece, again in early April.

The full Appropriations Committee will make a recommendation to the full House and Senate. The committee will be voting on the entire budget document, not just the Education portion.

The House takes it up first and then the Senate. Any member of the House may propose amendments on the floor, and the same with any member of the Senate. The two bodies must pass the same budget bill, so if the Senate approves a change, the House must take it up again and approve the amendment. If not, they have to keep at it until they agree on an identical version. It is not common for floor amendments to the budget to pass.

If the budget is not passed by April 1 or so, it will need to pass with two-thirds support in both houses in order to go into effect by July 1, the start of the next fiscal year. Before April 1, a simple majority could pass the budget and it could go into effect by July 1.

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~John Brandt

New NEAC Journal

As a new feature for this year's Northeast ASCD Affiliate Conference, the Northeast ASCD Affiliates have announced the formation of a new professional journal.

The new journal will be published in both a paper and digital format and will be made available to all conference registrats in digital format. Please check with your local affiliate to see if they will be sending the print version to their members.

Here is the Call for Papers:

The Northeast Affiliates of ASCD are seeking articles from practitioners describing programs and practices that focus on Professional Learning Communities. The following guidelines will be followed:

• Articles must be submitted electronically as Word documents to wayne.annie@sbcglobal.net
• MLA format 1500 word maximum;
• graphics as pdf files
• Deadline for submissions is August 1, 2007

For more information about article submission, please contat Wayne Sweeney at Connecticut ASCD

Longer School Year? Day?

The New York Times had an article on Tuesday describing the national trend of improving failing schools by extending the school day, and in some cases the school year. The article cites examples in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Tennesee, New Mexico, California and Florida where the plan is working and also cites examples of where there has been resistant to change.

In all of the cases cites, money to pay for the extra time is an important consideration. In one case, the governor of the New York, Eliot Spitzer proposed a $7 billion increase in education funding over the next four years to cover the extra cost.

But these plans are not without critics. The Times reports:

But the movement, which has expanded the day in some schools by as little as 30 minutes or as much as two hours, has many critics: among administrators, who worry about the cost; among teachers, whose unions say they work hard enough as it is, and have sought more pay and renegotiation of contracts; and among parents, who say their children spend enough time in school already.

The idea of expanding the school year was recently discussed in the Maine State Legislature as the Education Committee heard testimony on LD 470 "An Act To Add Ten Days to the School Year" sponsored by Senator Peter Mills. It seems the critics of this plan also came out in force at the hearing and given its price tag, it is not likely to go further.

But the longer school day/year may come about anyway. As again reported in the Times article:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the education committee, supports the idea of longer school days and is proposing $50 million a year, to rise to $150 million by 2012, under No Child Left Behind to train a corps of 40,000 teachers to help schools redesign academic content for those extra hours.

As my father was fond of saying, "we'll see!"

~John Brandt

Dine & Discuss: PLCs That Work

We are pleased to announce a new event being held at the Saco Middle School (SMS) on May 9, 2007. The SMS staff and administration will be facilitating a discussion on Professional Learning Communities That Work from 4:00 pm till 6:30 - dinner is included!

The development of Professional Learning Communities in schools is perhaps one of the most important and successful strategies for improving schools and increasing student performance. As stated in a recent newsletter by The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement:

Research shows that collaboration between teachers can be a powerful tool for professional development and a driver for school improvement by providing “opportunities for adults across a school system to learn and think together about how to improve their practice in ways that lead to improved student achievement” (Annenberg Institute for School Reform, 2004, p. 2).

This interactive session will provide participants with everyday ideas of how SMS empowers their teachers. Through collaborative meetings which are based on grade level and subject area teams, staff at SMS:

• review the curriculum
• analyze student assessment results through data digs
• use results to inform instruction
• continuously seek and share new learning and best practices

This event will begin with a presentation how the SMS PLCs got started and have been sustained. Led by a team of SMS staff, the discussion will allow plenty of time for questions and comments to help the participants examine their own schools and situations. School teams are encouraged to attend. Attendance is limited to 40 participants.

Read more about this event and register today.

Read more about Teacher Collaboration

~John Brandt

A slightly new look

We've updated the theme for the Maine ASCD Blog to allow more room for plug-in objects like the TeacherTube link below. If you have comments on the new look, please use the comment link below.

~John Brandt

You Tube for Teachers

I just came across this a few minutes ago. I read the reference in David Warlick's blog. It's called TeacherTube and yes, it is exactly like YouTube but contains only education videos.

As luck would have it Vicki Davis of the Cool Cat Teacher fame just posted a video. Priceless:

~John Brandt

Another View

The Kennebec Journal (KJ) is today reporting a slightly different take on yesterday's deliberations by the Appropriations subcommittee looking at school consolidation.

Perhaps it is one of those half-empty-half-full issues, but the KJ suggesting the consolidation plan requirements, discussed at yesterday's meeting, would be described as somewhat voluntary. In their article they state:

The latest state committee to take a crack at school system consolidation wants to see school districts of at least 2,500 students formed by July 1, 2008. But the collaboration would be optional.

I am not sure this is a correct interpretation because they then state:

The subcommittee suggested the Department of Education work with schools to help them form consolidated districts by Dec. 1. The department also could determine whether there are exceptions in certain regions where the new school districts should be smaller than 2,500 students.

If schools don't take action by Dec. 1, the state Board of Education would step in and have the power to set consequences for school units that don't comply.

That sounds like mandatory to me.

The other contentious issue - this one I did not report - had to do with the size of the new school boards associated with these consolidated units. It seems there is a concern that the size of the new boards be sufficiently small to be efficient and at the same time be representative of all of the communities involved. The issue is whether each town or municipality gets to have one person on the board. As reported by the KJ:

However, subcommittee member Rep. Sawin Millet Jr., R-Waterford, warned that too few board members will alienate towns without their own representation on the board.

"I can't imagine districts of this size with only nine board members," he said. "You'll be leaving some towns out. You're going to isolate a lot of towns that would have nobody sitting at the table."

The subcommittee is meeting again this morning, but I'm having trouble raising the maine.gov website to listen in...

~John Brandt

Moving to the Other End of the Court

The "court" as in basketball....we're keeping the March Madness metaphor going just a little bit longer.

It seems the action on the school consolidation plan is now firmly in the hands of the Appropriations Committee. Seeing that the Education Committee was not coming up with a consensus report, the Appropriations subcommittee has moved ahead and held a series of discussions to determine what they can and cannot agree on.

So far the agreements include a 2,500 student minimum size for all school administrative units. There seems to be more urgency in the Appropriations Committee work to find some savings and this magic number seems to be important although they apparently agreed to giving the Commissioner some latitude for special considerations in the more rural communities.

The subcommittee are apparently willing to allow for some "self-determination" and let districts try to come up with their own plans before December, 2007, but then the Commissioner gets involved and "mandates" consolidation plans.

The Appropriations subcommittee seems to also like school administrative units and not school unions, so we'll have to see how that shakes out.

And, it looks like the subcommittee prefers that the State Board of Education have the final say in the approving of new consolidated units and not the full legislature. I guess the fear here is that if the final decision was to be returned to the full legislature there was the potential that the whole plan could come unglued.

The subcommittee is meeting again on Saturday, so things might change again. Stay tuned.

~John Brandt

Gaining Substance

I remarked to someone yesterday that watching the ongoing debate in the Maine Legislature's Education Committee and the Appropriations Committee was a bit like watching a basketball playoff. In both cases the decision of who will win comes down to the last few seconds of the game.

I spent all of Wednesday afternoon with the Education Committee and later in a subcommittee meeting with the Appropriations Committee in which members of the Ed Committee presented their current status. Please be aware that these committees and subcommittees were planning to meet again on Thursday, Friday and most of the day Saturday. Thing are moving quickly.

Here is what I can report as of 5:30 pm when I left:

The Ed Committee has three "reports;" two are "majority" and one minority. When asked what that votes looked like, the Chair, Sen. Peter Bowman indicated that the two majority reports were split with five votes each and the minority report has two supporters. He did not reveal the breakdown of the two majority reports by member, but the minority report is supported by Sen. Peter Mills and Rep. Strang Burgess.

The two majority reports are subsets of each other. The base report still looks very similar to what the Ed Committee proposed several weeks ago although with some more substance and starting to look more like a bill. The other majority plan - which seemed to be getting the most attention - was referred to as the "Extra Strength" report.

The Extra Strength report has the following components (again this was as of yesterday afternoon):

• Definitions of public schools "entities" as including two major types - "school administrative units" which includes SADs, CSDs, and municipals; and School Unions.
• All of these new entities would be required to have a minimum of 2,500 students
• All entities would be required to submit a consolidation plan to the Commissioner of Education by December 1, 2007. The Commission would approve or disapprove the plan by December 15, 2007. The Commissioner would also have the power to have some flexibility to approve consolidation plans where the 2,500 student requirement could not be met*. If entities did not, or could not submit a plan, the Commissioner had the power to create a consolidation plan or include that entity with other units.
• There is a requirement in this report that there be savings of 10% in non-instructional expenses and "projected system administration expenditures...for fiscal 2008-9 may not represent more that 7% of the non-instructional expenditures..."
• Liability and debt service would remain with the original entity unless the new consolidated unit wished to acquire that debt.
• There are provisions to continue the current status quo with regard to the use of independent high schools and "town academies."
• Decisions to close small schools would require a super-majority of 2/3 vote of the new consolidated entity.
• There is a fair amount of language regarding the need to create transparency in the budgeting process so taxpayers can better see what they tax dollars are paying for. This was included in the governor's original plan and there are other similar proposals in the legislature.
• There is a fair amount of detail in the plan regarding voting and representation of the smaller units within the new consolidated entity. These appear very similar to current law regarding SADs.
• There is a section that deals with collaboration above and beyond the new consolidated entities. This essentially involves the creation of 26 regional centers (the same as proposed in the governor's plan) although with more flexibility to encourage more collaboration, and no restrictions to require entities to stay within these 26 regional centers. In other words, if an entity could work out a better deal with a neighboring entity and that entity was in a different regional district (i.e., two border districts) they would still be allowed and encouraged to collaborate.

The dynamics of the committee's process are interesting to watch and make for some dramatic moments. You can listen in to the sessions on the state website http://janus.state.me.us/legis/audio/education_cmte.html

NOTE: * This was an area of great discussion and contention. There are lots of concerns about the rural and small schools in Maine where it might require having to create "super districts" to achieve these numbers.

~John Brandt

Waiting Game

There is not much new to report about the governor's school district consolidation plan. The next move is up to the Appropriations Committee to do something. Word on the street is that they have been reminded that the governor's budget depends on savings coming from school district consolidation. They have also been hearing that to get any effective savings they will need to make consolidation mandatory and districts need to be in the 2,500 to 3,000 student range.

Over the weekend, the editors of the Portland Papers again scolded the Education Committee for not doing its work. Unlike the Education Committee, the Appropriations Committee is not made up of retired teachers and school administrators. So they can probably be more objective in their decision making. In today's Bangor Daily News, the Bangor Regional Chamber of Commerce has called for strong reform and supports the Brookings report. Spokesperson David Casavant states:

Money spent on administration and bureaucracies prevent meaningful resources from reaching the classrooms. Opponents of reform seek to preserve the status quo in the guise of local control. Compelling though this may seem, arguments based on local control reflect a subjective, time-bound perspective that merely gives effect to self-serving parochialism.

Maine ASCD has not taken an official position on the governor's proposal. Striking differences of opinion exist among our Board members. But I think it is safe to say that given the realities of our tax situation and declining enrollments, some form of district consolidation is inevitable. The question is how much and how fast.

Having personally lived through the merger of two small independent colleges here in Maine about ten years ago, I can only report that while the work was daunting, swift decision making and strong leadership are essential to success. The governor is showing those characteristics.

~John Brandt