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From the MDOE press release: Plans approved by voters (11/4/08): SAD 34 (Belfast)/SAD 56 (Searsport) Mount Desert Island, surrounding communities SAD 21 (Dixfield) / SAD 43 (Rumford) /SAD 39 (Buckfield)/ Hanover SAD 5 (Rockland) / SAD 50 (Thomaston) Windham/Raymond SAD 47 (Oakland) /China Freeport/Pownal/Durham Wiscasset area Saco/OOB/Dayton Poland/Minot/Mechanic Falls SAD 71 (Kennebunk)/Arundel SAD 38 (Etna) [...] in favor of school consolidation! This may be a season of surprises, but this particular declaration, released on Friday, isn’t one of them. Excerpts follow: It is now no longer up to me or the Governor, or the Legislature to make the case for reorganization. The case has to be made locally – by planning [...] A useful guide (from the Maine Small Schools Coalition) to the questions an RSU plan (and an RPC) ought to be answering. An excerpt: There’s more — read the whole thing! 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 [...] Yes, we’ve heard that there’s an election going on down in the United States, but up here in Maine, we’ll be watching the school consolidation votes! Those wily and nefarious conservatives over at As Maine Goes are running a thread soliciting predictions for the consolidation votes. Here’s one for instance: Here are my predictions: DEFEATED [...] A few days ago (on Tuesday) we looked at consolidation through the eyes of superintendents and RPC members frustrated with the process, the law, and the Maine DOE. We linked to some recent articles and featured a number of quotes from an article in the October 20 Bangor Daily News. Today we look at how [...] A series of recent articles has school superintendents inveighing against Satan school consolidation to beat the band. They’ve got some real issues, these folks (with consolidation, that is), and they’re letting us know. See Consolidation plan not working, school superintendents say (Sun Journal, 10/18), School consolidation’s problems aired by superintendents (Daily Bulldog, 10/17), and SADs [...] The newest MDOE reorganization update is just out; read it here. The updates increasingly read like an account of a horse race, especially in “The Tally”. I suppose it’s the season; the coverage of our elections bears a lot of resemblance to The Daily Racing Form. Be sure to bet the winner! I [...] The MDI folks are on reorganization like a dog on a bone. At their excellent web site, they stay up to date on everything happening in the State concerning reorganization. Thursday the MDOE issued a new status report. The MDI folks have created a map and a table representing the data in useful ways.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference: Maine has withheld subsidy checks this month for nearly a third of the state’s school districts, delaying a monthly infusion of funds for 91 school systems. Department of Education officials say the districts have not submitted required information about expenditures and student enrollment. District superintendents reached on Thursday [...] As we come down to it, the money…isn’t there! It isn’t there in a couple of ways. First, the State is not delivering the “savings” back to the districts. The greybeards among us might recall that way back in, say, ought six, this was the very reason for “administrative consolidation.” But now the savings, where [...] It’s not a happy time in the land of consolidation, despite brave pronouncements by the State, and, in general, support from the major newspapers. Here’s the latest (today!) update from the State. Through excerpts from this document, we cut to the chase: Reorganization plans (42) Alternative plans (34) Exempt SAUs (11) Unapproved Configurations (9) This [...] You’ve got to admire that native wit! From “Winslow: Regional plan for schools gets rejected” in Tuesday’s (Waterville) Morning Sentinel: School board members on Monday evening rejected a proposal to regionalize with the six other communities comprising School Union 52 and Messalonskee School District. The unanimous vote came after several members voiced concerns that [...] |
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