The Maine Heritage Policy Center’s* Stephen Bowen gives an update on how school choice is faring under reorganization:
For generations, families living in communities without a high school were allowed to send their children to a public or private school of their choice, paid for with public funds under Maine’s “town tuitioning” system. The district consolidation law, however, requires there be a public high school in every school district, and while the consolidation law nominally protects school choice where it has traditionally been available, school choice has been lost due to consolidation in the Bath area, and is threatened in other districts across Maine.
The areas where school choice is most endangered:
- Freeport/MSAD 62 (Pownal)/Durham: The reorganization plan to merge these three districts would phase out school choice for Durham and Pownal. Voters in both Durham and Pownal have already agreed to exclusive tuitioning contracts with neighboring Freeport, which all but guarantees the end of school choice for those towns. Durham’s 200 high schoolers attended six different schools last year, while Pownal’s 68 high schoolers attended five different schools. All will be required to attend Freeport High School under the merger plan to be put before voters in the three districts on November 4.
- MSAD 23 (Carmel/Levant)/Hermon: Today, the nearly 300 high school students in MSAD 23 can attend a high school of their choice with a waiver from the school board. Under the proposed consolidation plan, those students currently taking advantage of this choice option will be allowed to continue attending the school of their choice, but the waiver provision is to be eliminated, effectively ending any school choice options for other MSAD 23 students, both now and into the future. This choiceending plan is undergoing final revisions before being submitted to the Department of Education for approval.
- MSAD 38(Etna/Dixmont)/MSAD 48(Corinna, Hartland, Newport, Palmyra, Plymouth and St. Albans): Like MSAD 23, MSAD 38 has historically allowed school choice under a waiver system. The current plan for its merger with neighboring MSAD 48 would eliminate that choice option for the 125 high school students in MSAD 38, though the plan will allow students attending other schools today to continue to do so. Interestingly, this reorganization plan is notable for its hostility toward school choice, a sentiment made clear by the plan’s assertion that it “in no way constitutes present or future school choice.” Not only no school choice now, it would appear, but no hope for school choice ever. The plan goes before voters November 4.
Read the whole thing. Sometimes those wily and nefarious conservatives have something interesting to say!
* A rascally right-wing organization never mentioned in polite company, especially since they had the nerve to make publicly available the compensation of public employees!