BUCKSPORT — How can one superintendent in Hancock County do the job of nine? How will a super-sized school board handle the day-to-day concerns of each of the 34 towns in a new uber district?

How will increasing class size benefit Maine’s K-12 students?

Ask almost any teacher, school administrator or school board member in Hancock County about Governor John Baldacci’s new school district consolidation plan and they’ll have more questions than answers.

At state Sen. Richard Rosen’s (R-Hancock and Penobscot counties) Jan. 18 forum to discuss Baldacci’s education proposals, not a single person in the room supported the consolidation plan.

Many of the 30 or more teachers, superintendents, school board members, parents and local residents in attendance at Rosen’s forum at the Alamo Theater gave their two cents’ worth on the consolidation plan and were rewarded with applause.

Rosen said at the beginning of Thursday’s forum that the session was an opportunity for people to voice their concerns and reactions to the plan. He said he hoped the forum would be informative for both himself and those present.

Millard Clement, who has over 38 years of experience on the Orland School Committee and is currently chairman of the board, said he’s never seen an education plan quite as radical as the Governor’s consolidation plan. The present system of superintendents in Maine goes back a long way, he added, perhaps 100 years.

“The biggest one is loss of local control,” said Clement when asked after the forum what he believes the biggest problem is with Baldacci’s plan.

Clement questions how a mega-school board based in Ellsworth is going to respond to the smaller, day-to-day problems that occur in elementary, middle and high schools.

“One guy down there is not going to be up here to deal with these things,” he said.

Last Thursday’s was Rosen’s second forum in his Senate District 31, which includes parts of Hancock and Penobscot counties. State Rep. Jim Schatz (D-Blue Hill) of District 37, which includes Blue Hill, Brooksville, Castine, Penobscot, Sedgwick and Surry, was also at the Bucksport forum.

Those who attended the first forum, held at the Brewer Auditorium, had similar concerns about the education plan, said the senator: loss of local control and whether some communities would continue to have a choice in which public schools their children attend.

Rosen himself has his doubts.

“The thing that is lacking in this proposal is a vision of achieving excellence in education,” Rosen said. “For a proposal like this to really deliver, it has to have, as an endgame, a clear vision of the classroom of the future and how the education system can move to an even stronger, brighter system. That doesn’t seem to be evident in this proposal.

“And whatever the Legislature does in education reform, it has to be tied to a vision of a better tomorrow.”

Rosen said the Governor has indicated he intends to “vigorously support his idea.”

“I have not seen him as energized, as animated, or as focused on advancing a proposal as he has been about this one,” Rosen said.

Rosen also said it is likely Baldacci, his staff and Maine Department of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron were developing the education consolidation plan as Baldacci was campaigning for his second term.

“I know they were working on it minutes before it went to print,” said Rosen.

Four or five other education consolidation proposals have sprung up in the Legislature as well, two of which preserve local control, Rosen said.

“Some kind of school consolidation bill will come out of this Legislature,” he said. “If this is the one that survives, it will be amended extensively.”

Rosen said the response from his fellow state senators, especially the Democratic majority, has been “a cautious reaction.”

The Legislature has had two or three briefings with Gendron and it’s clear from those briefings that the proposal is “a work in progress,” added Rosen, and that extensive revisions of the consolidation plan should occur in February. 

“It’s now in the hands of the Legislature,” said Rosen. “It’s now a bill that we must deal with.”

Rosen said not all those who have talked with him dislike the proposal. Those who support the concept, though, have said there should be more districts, more like 36, instead of 26 districts statewide.

Several audience members at the forum called Baldacci’s consolidation plan the new TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) bill and that a grassroots effort was needed to defeat the proposal.

“There needs to be a groundswell of local support for schools and for your children to defeat this,” said Bucksport School Board Member Judy Belton.

Belton, who teaches in Bangor and has over 25 years teaching experience, said one of the biggest mistakes Baldacci’s proposal makes is increasing the student-to-teacher ratio in Maine middle and high schools to 17-to-1 — the national average.

“I think the bottom line is what is best for Maine students,” she said during the forum. “If they want to put our class sizes at the national norm then performance has to go there, too.”                     

As a School Board member, Belton said she meets her constituents everywhere and that they tell her what they think about their school system.

They need that local dialogue, said Belton, and that local control.

Bucksport Superintendent Judy Lucarelli said the consolidation proposal would eliminate about 2,000 jobs statewide, including 600 to 650 teaching positions as well as superintendents, curriculum coordinators, central office staff members and special education directors. The biggest savings would come in eliminating the teaching positions.

The two factors that contribute most to a student’s performance in school, said Lucarelli, is class size and the amount of involvement by parents. The new proposal would diminish both, she said.

In Maine, students rank fourth in the nation for testing because of the state’s smaller class sizes and the number of students identified for special education, said Lucarelli.

The Bucksport superintendent said she receives phone calls on a regular basis from students’ parents. If the school district superintendent were located farther away in Ellsworth and the school district had over 7,000 students, as is being proposed for Hancock County, parents would feel less inclined to be involved with their children’s education, said Lucarelli.

Lucarelli said that with a school district of 7,000 students, if board members were chosen based on each Hancock County schools’ student population, Bucksport would have one representative on that school board. Orland and Orrington would have but one board member representing both schools.

Belton said the Governor’s plan would also have an effect on the state’s population and economic growth.

“People will go someplace else for their kids,” she said.

And with those parents leaving Maine, said Belton, will go potential business owners, qualified employees and an economic growth vital to the state.