For the past few weeks, the Education Committee has wrestled with trying to repair the troubled school district consolidation law. The Education Department came to the Committee in early December with a bill to fix some of the cost-shift and other technical problems with the law, and it was hoped that this bill, LD 1932, would zip through the Committee, go to the House and Senate floors for a vote in early January, and become law immediately as a so-called “emergency enactor.�
A few things happened along the way, however…
First, the Education Commissioner ruled in mid-December that a whole host of the consolidation plans submitted to her on December 1 were “out of compliance with the law,� sending many consolidation planning groups back to the drawing board. Most notably among these was the group from Mount Desert Island, which had submitted a plan that matched closely what they were doing already. This was notable because much of MDI is represented by Rep. Hannah Pingree, the House Majority Leader, who evidently had received prior assurances from the Commissioner that what MDI proposed would be accepted. It turns out that it was not and neither were many of the other consolidation plans submitted.
As a result of the public outcry from this, legislators returned to Session in early January looking to make far more than a few technical changes to the law. Three Republican members of the Education Committee developed a substantial amendment to LD 1932, which would allow the creation of “super-sized� School Unions. This model would permit local districts to keep their own local schools and school boards while sharing services through a regional administrative office run by a Superintendent.
After much such tinkering and amending, LD 1932 was finally voted out of the Education Committee with an 11-3 report about a week ago, with the majority supporting a series of mostly technical changes and the three-member minority supporting much the same plus the school union option.
Developments did not end there, however. Late last week, Sen. Elizabeth Mitchell, the Senate Majority Leader, who faces some constituent pressure of her own, developed yet another amendment to LD 1932, which she will evidently attempt to attach to the bill when it comes to a vote on the Senate floor. This amendment also allows a School Union option, but places more restrictions on what local school districts are able to do than the Minority Report of the Committee does.
The situation that thus faces legislators is that they will be able to choose from at least three different versions of LD 1932. No doubt legislators are preparing other amendments to the law as well, which will lead to a lengthy floor fight in both chambers to get the bill passed.
Adding additional complications to the matter is the issue of the LD 1932 being an “Emergency Measure.� Such measures, which require the vote of two-thirds of both bodies, can take effect immediately with the governor’s signature. If they do not receive the two-thirds vote, they pass as so-called “regular enactors�, which do not actually become law until well after the legislative session is over. In the case of LD 1932, a failure to get a two-thirds vote would mean none of the elements of law would take effect until mid-summer, perhaps as late as August.
If that is the case, LD 1932 becomes largely meaningless, because none of the barriers the new law is intended to remove will actually get removed in time for districts to put consolidation plans together for a June 10, 2008 referendum vote, which is required by the existing law.
The pressure to get a two-thirds vote in both bodies is therefore enormous, and it puts individual legislators and small groups of legislators, such as the bipartisan Rural Caucus, in an enviable position. In short, their votes are needed to get a two-thirds vote on LD 1932, especially with the majority party seemingly divided between the Majority Report that their members on the Education Committee supported and the school union plan developed by Sen. Mitchell and openly supported by Rep. Pingree, the two majority leaders.
The Rural Caucus could successfully push for more local control, for instance. The Republicans, who despite their minority status will have some bargaining room in this instance, could push to preserve the existing law’s budget validation process. That provision requires voter approval of all school budgets, but it is postponed for a year under all three versions of LD 1932.
School Choice supporters should make their voices heard as well. Already, a district consolidation effort in the Bath area has meant the end of school choice for students there. The current consolidation law nominally preserves school choice where it currently exists, but such an arrangement, in which students with choice and those without share a single district, is clearly unsustainable. The Department of Education, no fan of choice, has gone so far as to identify school choice as a “barrier.� While LD 1932 makes no changes regarding school choice, choice supporters may never have a better chance to insist on the long-term preservation and, ideally, expansion of school choice options.
What will ultimately come as a result of all this unknown, but things should begin happening very soon, perhaps as soon as this week. All eyes should therefore be turned to Augusta, where, for the first time since it was passed last spring, the controversial consolidation law goes before lawmakers once again. Will they provide the state with needed changes to the law in time or will they get bogged down in endless battles and achieve nothing?
Stay tuned…
