Local school, regional scam," Whiting resident Reinald Neilsen's take on the governor's proposal to regionalize school administration, seemed to sum up the mood of an overflow crowd at the Elm Street School in East Machias. The meeting, organized by State Senator Kevin Raye of Perry, brought together a representative of the state Department of Education and two others with alternative proposals at a public forum on January 29. Over 225 people came to the school auditorium to ask questions and express their opinion of the proposal, and those opinions were unanimously negative about the governor's plan.

      Speakers at the meeting included Jim Rier, originally from Machias, who represented the state Department of Education and presented a brief overview of the proposed plan for school reorganization included in the governor's budget proposal; Geoff Herman of the Maine Municipal Association, who presented information about a plan devised by the MMA, Maine Education Association and the Maine Chamber of Commerce to achieve savings through other means; Scott Porter, superintendent in School Union 102 and president of the Maine Small Schools Coalition, who spoke in opposition to the Baldacci plan; Rep. Howard McFadden, a member of the Education Committee, who presented but did not necessarily endorse yet another plan, drawn up by the Maine State Board of Education; and Rep. Ian Emery of Cutler. Senator Raye also presented a plan developed by the Maine Heritage Policy Center to reorganize Maine schools.
After the invited guests had spoken for about an hour, the meeting was opened up to public comment, and for the next two hours members of local school boards, school administrators and teachers, and parents and local residents clearly expressed their message that they did not like the proposal and did not want it to be put into effect.

     Vernon Wentworth, chair of the Princeton School Committee, opened the comment period with a simple statement: "The only way we will give up local control is to plant me in the cemetery." John Sprague, a membre of the Marshfield School Committee and a teacher at Washington Academy for 32 years, voiced similar sentiments. "When government takes over, look out. Governor Baldacci really does not understand education. The Maine Learning Results has taken tremendous energy and time away from teaching." Concerning expected savings, he stated, "I have never seen anything that the state did that didn't cost money."

     Washington County Commissioner Chris Gardner complained that the proposal had been presented only after the election. Saying that he felt this plan was a bad proposal and that a bad proposal doesn't become good, he lightened the mood of the crowd by saying, "I have never seen the wheels fall back onto a cart."

     Bill Attick, a selectman from Dennysville, asked Rier for a clarification of how the unorganized territories would be treated under the governor's plan. Rier responded that the unorganized territories will be integrated into the regions for administrative services, instead of being served by the Department of Education as they are now. To a further inquiry, he continued that details would need to be worked out, but there would be no more tuition and costs of the region would be apportioned onto the unorganized territories.

     Rier responded similarly to Karen Raye, wife of Senator Raye and a school board member in Perry, to her inquiry about how the boards, with 5 to 15 members, would be elected in the regional districts. Rier responded, "You will decide. Implementation teams from the state will help." He continued that it was "the responsibility of the implementation teams to set up procedure." At one point in the meeting, when pressed whether some towns might not have a representative on the regional boards, Rier reiterated that every town would be represented "perhaps in wards, where more than one town would elect a single representative." Senator Raye remarked, "If you have 22 towns and a maximum of 15 on the board, my math says some towns won't have a representative."
Terry Lux, the principal of Shead High School in Eastport, brought a different perspective on the plan. She began her remarks by saying, "I am from away. I left Florida because school is no longer a community organization [there]." She went on to say that Florida is used as an example in presenting the governor's proposal. "I've been there, I've lived it, and it's why I'm in Maine. Look at Maine's educational achievement, and it is way better [than Florida's]."

     After about an hour and a half of public comment, Senator Raye asked for a show of hands vote as to how people felt about the proposals. The governor's proposal for consolidation received no votes; the plan from the Maine Municipal Association, Maine Education Association and the Maine Chamber of Commerce, which had been presented by Geoff Herman, received 10 votes; the plan from the state Board of Education, briefly presented by Rep. Howard McFadden, received no votes; the Maine Heritage Policy Center proposal, outlined by Senator Raye, received the most support, with 31 votes in favor. Voting for no action and in opposition to all the plans presented were 47 people.

     Near the end of the evening, Mike Look, chairman of the East Machias school board, asked for Jim Rier to break down the savings in the governor's proposal, going back to information presented earlier by Scott Porter of the Maine Small Schools Coalition that the 118 full-time and 34 part-time superintendents earned less than a total of $14 million per year, much less than Baldacci's claimed savings of $250 million in three years.

     Rier said that superintendent and support staff cuts would total $40 million annually; that special education, transportation, operations and physical plant would see savings of five percent the first year, about $31 million dollars, and two and a half percent in the second and third years, and that additional funding for a principal in each school, promised in the Baldacci plan, would cost about $7.2 million the first year.

     Porter then made the point that Education Commissioner Susan Gendron had said that 649 teachers would not be funded under the proposed increase in student/teacher ratio. Rier responded, "Yes, but that is not part of the $241 million in savings. That would save $25 million and would be reinvested in computers and other areas in the schools."

     The meeting closed with two local school board members expressing concern for the closing of local schools and the loss of local control and involvement if the proposal passes. Steve Seeley of Jonesboro said, "He [the governor] knows we will fight to keep our schools open, and if he gives control to somebody else, they're not going to fight as hard." Sylvina Lyons of Beals said, "I feel very threatened. I feel that our board and our superintendent know what is best for our school, and I don't think a regional board would know as well."

     Senator Raye and several speakers from the audience encouraged everyone present to go to Augusta for the first public hearing on the proposals by the legislature on Monday, February 5.