AUGUSTA — The Education Committee is recommending changes to the school consolidation law.

One change would allow some school districts to come in under the current minimum of 1,200 students.

Another sets up a mechanism so communities can raise money specifically for their local schools.

The education commissioner is supporting those proposals in order to keep the consolidation process moving.

The amendments stop short of allowing the continuation of the union form of school governance, with autonomous local school committees.

Mount Desert Island had become the test case for unions in its proposed consolidation plan submitted to the state last month, and the compromise was designed to appease that district and others who want more say over their local schools.

“The local school committee was the most important element in our meeting with MDI,” said Sen. Peter Mills (R-Somerset County), who drafted the compromise.

The proposal essentially keeps the regional school board’s power intact in the new district, but allows it to empower a local school committee to propose additional funding, for everything from a French teacher to an extra bus run for kids who stay after school.

Money for the extras not included in the regional school unit budget would be picked up by the individual municipality, if approved by voters there.

The local school committee’s recommendation could apply to not only elementary schools in a town, but also the local high school. That concession was made for the nearly 30 proposed regional districts that find themselves with two high schools and believe there is a need to protect them.

On the flip side, the regional school board would set the overall school budget based on what it determines are the essential programs all schools in the newly formed district must offer. That budget would have to be approved by a majority of voters in the new district.

The Education Committee approved the compromise and a handful of other amendments in an 11-1 vote Friday. Those changes will be added onto a Department of Education bill that removes financial barriers to consolidation, most significantly allowing school consolidation partners to work out their own cost-sharing agreements to avoid wholesale cost shifts.

The consolidation law is designed to create no more than 80 school units statewide — out of the current 290 — and they are supposed to be up and running by next year.

Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said she supports the changes made by the committee because they appear necessary in order to get the bill through the Legislature with a two-thirds vote.

That level of backing would allow the changes to go into effect immediately, which is seen as critical to get school consolidation on track. Right now no districts except for one centered in Bath, which was working on its own consolidation plan before the law was passed, have submitted complete proposals to the state. Most are waiting to see what the Legislature does, and the deadline for local voter approval of the new districts is this November.

“If we could get to the two-thirds that would be fabulous,” said Gendron, who also supported allowing select districts to come in under 1,200 students. The law as currently written requires districts of at least 2,500 students, where possible, but no fewer than 1,200.

The amendment to allow smaller districts is being written to specifically address those units that have tried, but can’t find consolidation partners. It would not be a wholesale exemption to the 1,200-student rule.

“We don’t want to unravel all the folks who have come together,” Gendron said.

Without the committee’s amendments, the fear is the Legislature will reject what Gendron believes are essential changes to the law that are blocking districts throughout the state from coming together.

The most critical is the flexibility for partners to negotiate their own cost-sharing formulas for expenses over those outlined in the state’s Essential Programs and Services funding formula. Without that change some property-rich communities will see substantial increases in their education costs.

The Department of Education also wants to eliminate the requirement that all communities must pay at least 2 mills on their property tax toward education, regardless of the number of students they have, and assure that property-rich communities that now get minimum state aid in the form of special education funding continue to get that aid when they merge into a regional district.

Until those changes affecting finances go through, those working on creating new districts say they cannot produce a finalized plan.

“School planning committees frankly have stopped right now because they’re awaiting our decisions,” said Sen. Libby Mitchell (D-Kennebec County), a member of the Education Committee and formerly its chairman. “It’s important to keep this whole measure moving.”

Rep. Peter Edgecomb (R-Caribou), a member of the Education Committee and a retired school superintendent, voted against the package of amendments, supporting instead an option that would allow schools unions to continue in the state. There currently are 122 school units in unions statewide.

Communities in unions would have their own local school committees and they, in turn, would send representatives to a joint board, which would hire a shared superintendent. The shared board would develop a plan to share central office services, noninstructional support services such as transportation and facilities managements, curriculum development and special education programs.

Edgecomb will propose his school union option in the minority report attached to the committee’s overall bill, meaning it can be debated before the full Legislature.