George Crawford of Harrington, ME The people of the towns that are on the consolidation need to weigh whether or not the their is a prize when in comes to consolidation. The goal of improving administrative efficiency and saving money is debatable. After a few years when the governance structure is consolidated then the bureaucracy will begin to grow again as the central office staff is shorthanded. More people will be needed to meet the needs of the 5,000 students in the district.
The loss of local control and local democracy need to be looked at also. Is it to the advantage of a town with direct control over their schools to give up control to a larger bureaucracy and where the town if it is small may have little or no voting power? The town will also go from having complete control over their school to little or none. Is this worth it to a community?
Improving the quality of education has been the major promises of educational administrative consolidation. The promise being that the resources will go from administration into the classroom. I believe that this will be false. The state has cut back on school subsidy and forced schools to cut 5% out of transportation, facilities, and maintenance, and special education. This was in order to save $36.5 million in the current state budget. The stae can also say that they are paying 55% of edcuational costs as mandated by the law passed in a referendum a few years ago.
The improved programs of schools has been going on under the current system for a long time and the sharing of resources and programs. Is the prize worth it? I feel that it is not. The loss of the local control of schools and local decision making is a step back for democracy. A good parallel is in the 1990s when the US government said we would have billions in budget surpluses in the 2000s. We were debating how to spend it. Now we are spending record surpluses. Consolidation looks good on paper but will not be good in reality!report abuse