The governor's school redistricting plan may be a well-aimed policy, but the language and assumptions that surround it are not. The problem of escalating cost is not unique to Maine or its educational system and it can never be completely solved. The problem of rising costs lies in the very nature of teaching, or any other private service, and will not go away no matter how many administrators or supervisors are cut from the budget.

Economists call the phenomenon "price disease," and it is a well-studied and researched problem. To see the reason for these rising costs, imagine Maine's economy with only three economic sectors: manufacturing, agriculture and personal services (things like education, medicine, car repair).

Now, imagine that the cost of living rises 5 percent every year. Assuming that everybody's wage and costs escalate at about the same rate, there would be no real change in the actual cost of anything. You might pay more for a pound of hamburger, or a one- room apartment rental, but you would make more money in your wage as well.

Of course, not everyone's wage will rise as fast as the price of the necessities of living. But the point is no one singles out education as being any more expensive then any other sector of the economy ... until the effects of productivity are felt.

Productivity means producing more things with less labor and resources. Through the years, sectors of the economy like manufacturing, agriculture and forestry have repeatedly shown large increases of productivity. The number of people required to bring in a crop of potatoes, build an automobile, catch a ton of fish or cut a thousand cord of pulp has dramatically decreased. This means that if manufacturing and agricultural sectors can get an increase of 2 percent productivity per year, the net increase in the cost of their products will only be 3 percent.

Unfortunately, personal service sectors have never been able to realize that type of productivity. In fact, consumers frequently don't even want to see productivity gains in personal services. Patients in a doctor's office do not want to be interviewed by a computer diagnostic program and most parents want more teachers per student, not fewer. A 2 percent differential may not seem like much, but compounded yearly it will make personal service twice as expensive as manufactured products within 35 years. This is not counting the original three percent inflationary rise experienced by all sectors of the economy.

Even though the Governor's plan will not cure cost disease, one could argue that it might slow it down. Reducing the number of administrative units could bring about an economy of scale; larger districts could use their resources more efficiently.

But here again, we don't know the whole story. Economies of scale can be realized but not by simply eliminating some administrative positions. In our school district, the superintendent, his assistant and business manager and all the secretaries and accountants in his office only account for about 3 percent of the yearly school budget. The cost of living has been going up at around 3.4 percent per year so any savings realized by eliminating this entire work force would be eaten up in less than a year -- this assuming that whatever work they do will not have to be passed on to other people in the district.

Economies of scale will only work if the entire organization comes under scrutiny. Old and inefficient schools will need to be closed down, students will need to be bussed from one town to another, teachers will need to be reassigned, relocated or let go. Reducing the number of superintendents and making larger purchase orders for paper and fuel oil will not change the basic economics of school costs.

Creating an economy of scale may be the direction that Maine people want to go with school reform, but it is a conversation that no politician wants to engage in; it is far easier to tell the voters that the real problem is the guy with the bigger salary. It may well be that 10 years down the road, we will all be the better off for the changes we make today, but change is painful and always involves the loss of something. We need to have an open discussion of the cost of school reform and what we expect from it, not a feel- good bandaid remedy that promises great gains and no pain.

Alan Haley teaches advanced placement economics at Waterville High School.