Maine Heritage Policy Center Blog

The controversial school reorganization law that passed last year was supposed to preserve school choice for those communities that had it. The Department of Education's reorganization website says clearly that “Communities that have choice for their students now will continue to have choice after reorganization.” In fact, the reorganization law itself says that "the preservation of opportunities for choice of schools" is “the declared policy of the state.”

What is really happening? A report we'll have out soon describes how school choice options are being lost as a result of reorganization. Here are a few examples of what we found:

• The commissioner has already approved a planned merger of MSAD 16, Monmouth, Richmond, and Dresden. Under the plan, high school choice for Dresden is to be limited to only 15% of high school students, with the remaining 85% to have no choice but to attend Hall-Dale high school in MSAD 16. While approximately that percent of Dresden’s over 100 high school students attend Hall-Dale today, it was not always so. According to data on the state’s School Profiles website, as recently as the fall of 2004 only 71% of Dresden’s students attended high school in MSAD 16, with the remainder attending five other high schools. The commissioner’s approval of a plan that so drastically limits school choice seems inconsistent with both the law and her previous statements regarding the preservation of school choice.

• In a February 1, 2008 letter to the Reorganization Planning Committee developing the Freeport/Pownal/Durham RSU, the commissioner stated that she was confident that their plan would be approved pending legislative action on LD 1932. She congratulated them on being among the first RPC groups to produce a plan that “meets the policy objectives and parameters of the law.”

The March 11, 2008 version of their plan, however, would ultimately eliminate school choice for both Durham and Pownal. Under the provisions of the plan, school choice opportunities are to be essentially “grandfathered” for students already taking advantage of high school choice, and for those currently in grades 6-8 in Durham and in grade 8 in Pownal. Once these students are through the system, school choice is to be eliminated. Today, the over 200 high school students in Durham attend seven different high schools, and as recently as the fall of 2004, they attended eleven different high schools. Given a choice today, only two Durham high school students attend Freeport High School, the very school to which every Durham student is to be sent in a few short years. As recently as 2004, the almost 70 high school students from Pownal attended seven different high schools, despite Pownal’s unique and legally questionable practice of paying only half the state tuition rate for private schools. The proximity of these two towns to so many high school options has made them among the best communities in Maine for school choice. Choice for students in the two towns will be gone in a few short years, however, despite the fact that the regionalization law guarantees its preservation.

• A grandfathering provision is also being put into place in the RSU being developed for MSAD 23 and Hermon. As recently as the fall of 2004, high school students from MSAD 23 attended six different high schools under a “waiver” system. Under the provisions of the reorganization plan, however, existing waivers are to be grandfathered, after which time no more waivers will be granted, thus eliminating school choice options entirely for the almost 300 MSAD 23 students who have that option today. As if to slide the question of school choice completely off the table, under the “school choice” heading of the reorganization plan the plan’s authors simply wrote “not applicable.”

• That same strategy is being employed by opponents of choice in MSAD 38 and MSAD 48, who are looking to form an RSU there. Like MSAD 23, MSAD 38 has historically allowed choice using a waiver system. As a result, the 125 high school students from MSAD 38 currently attend six different high schools. The reorganization plan under discussion there would eliminate such waivers, forcing all MSAD 38 high school students to attend Nokomis high school in MSAD 48, with which MSAD 38 has historically had a tuitioning contract. Choice supporters there have threatened lawsuits to block the proposed loss of choice.

We'll soon release a report that goes into more detail on what exactly is going on here, but the important thing at this point is that those in school choice communities and those supporters of school choice across Maine need to be keeping a very careful eye on reorganization developments. In all likelihood, we'll see more examples of threats to choice as the district consolidation effort moves forward.

Posted by Steve Bowen at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Patrick Fleenor, Chief Economist at the Tax Foundation, has more to say about the ill effects on society from illicit cigarette smuggling in a column in today's Wall Street Journal.

Posted by J. Scott Moody at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the Reorganization Planning Committees (RPC's) get back to work developing plans for the creation of Regional School Units (RSU's), they will have to deal with latest wrinkle in the consolidation debacle, which is the advent of so-called Alternative Organizational Structures (AOS's).

Readers will recall that the legislature passed a bill this past session, (which the governor promptly vetoed) allowing for the creation of super-sized school unions, in place of the RSU's proscribed in the original law. RSU's are modeled on existing School Administrative Districts. Made up of several towns, they share a common school system and school administration and are governed by a single school board. School Unions, by contrast, share certain administrative functions, but remain as independent municipal school systems, each with their own school board. The legislature approved a plan to allow a school union-type model as an option for consolidating districts, but the governor's veto sent them back to the drawing board.

What emerged was a provision to allow the Commissioner to approve an "alternative organizational structure," as long as she feels it will "satisfy the purposes of the school reorganization law." Such a structure, the law says, must result in:

(a) Consolidation of system administration;

(d) Adoption of consistent school policies and school calendars and a plan for consistent collective bargaining agreements.

This provision has received mixed reviews from the school community. The group from MDI, which was the primary force behind the push for a school union option, has said that given the situation, the AOS provision represents a workable option. Others have claimed that the new bill contains little in the way of helpful changes, and that serious obstacles remain, including the requirement that merging districts create some kind of cost-sharing formula.

The most serious obstacle of all, which is the state's instance on a one-size-fits-all solution that only it can approve, was made apparent yet again in the following statement from Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin, which appeared in a recent Bangor Daily News article, and which touched in whether or not MDI would get a "waiver" to be approved as an AOS:

"The reality is that MDI, if they work at it, will get a waiver, but not a waiver for what they have now," he said. "What MDI has now is pretty close to what we want. So with a little bit of work MDI can operate as a single system. Under the law the state will write a single check to a single system and reporting will be done for the entire unit. They will be treated like a single entity and they will have to act like a single entity.""

Ah yes, all must bend and stoop before the state, which knows better than anyone how school should be run. "They are close to what WE want," he says. The condescending arrogance of these people is astonishing.

So, the long march toward district consolidation continues. Off in the hills, though one can sometimes still make out the sound of repeal petitions still being signed. Help may be on the way...

Posted by Steve Bowen at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Patrick Fleenor, Chief Economist at the Tax Foundation, had an op-ed in the Boston Globe a few days ago which details the problem of high cigarette taxes leading to cigarette smuggling and other criminal activities. He concludes by saying, "Backers of the current hike argue that it will raise needed revenue while discouraging smoking. The first claim is myopic, since the tax imposes costs on society in terms of lawlessness. The widespread availability of cheap cigarettes via the black market also undermines the second."

More disturbing, Fox News this morning has a story about how cigarette smuggling is leading to the funding of terrorist organizations. The story is based on a report prepared for the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security titled "Tobacco and Terror: How Cigarette Smuggling is Funding our Enemies Abroad."

Why is this an issue for Maine? Maine's high cigarette taxes are an enabler to these smuggling activities. Maine's recent increase in taxes on beer, wine and soda only serves to expand the menu of items that can be profitably trafficked by smugglers. The next time Maine legislators plan to raise these types of excise taxes again, they should keep in mind the conclusions reached by this study:

"Experts have long acknowledged that terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah 'depend on a wide variety of criminal enterprises, ranging from smuggling to fraud to drug trade to diamond trade in regions across the world,' including the United States. Terrorist organizations rely heavily on their global web of illicit enterprises to financially support their recruiting, training, arming, and operational objectives. As law enforcement agencies continue to combat terrorist and criminal fundraising schemes, these criminal groups will continue to adapt and exploit emerging vulnerabilities. The ability of these groups to engage in low-risk, cash-based schemes such as cigarette smuggling are critical to the continuation of their operations. The more than $50,000 in profits that smuggling rings can generate from one contraband load (1,500 cartons) is enough to fund as many as 10 USS Cole bombing operations. In just two months of illicit cigarette trade operations, a motivated terrorist cell could generate sufficient funds to carry out another September 11th style attack, in which operational costs were estimated to be $500,000."

Posted by J Scott Moody at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In less than a week, two separate op-eds on school choice have appeared in Maine's two largest newspapers.

Last Thursday, my piece on the loss of school choice in the Bath area appeared in the Portland Press Herald. Today, an excellent op-ed by two parents in the Etna-Dixmont area appears in the Bangor Daily News.

This renewed interest in school choice is coming at exactly the right time. Now that the legislature has enacted a "fix" to the consolidation law, reorganization committees across the state are going back to work, under pressure to get consolidation plans ready for approval by the Commissioner of Education and local voters.

Supporters of school choice should be wary.

Why? Because even though choice is nominally protected by the reorganization law - under the law, those towns that have choice now will continue to have it - there is reason to fear that eliminating school choice may become a precondition imposed on those towns that have choice as they look to merge with towns that do not have choice.

The Etna-Dixmont case, about which the parents from those two towns write so passionately in today's BDN, is a good example. According to published reports, the reorganization committee there is looking to end school choice for Etna and Dixmont's MSAD 38 as a condition of its joining with neighboring MSAD 48 in Newport. Though the majority of high schoolers in MSAD 38 attend Nokomis High School In Newport, state data shows that students there attend five other high schools as well, including John Bapst, Mt. View, Bangor High, Brewer High, and Hermon High. The school board is apparently split on the issue, with some supporting keeping choice while others seem happy to force all MSAD 38 kids to attend Nokomis whether it meets their educational needs or not.

Is this legal? I'm not a lawyer, but it sure doesn't seem as though it is. The reorganization law is very clear that "if the option of attending a public school in another school administrative unit or a private school ... was available to students in the previous education unit, that option continues to be available...after the municipality’s inclusion in the regional school unit.”

Those opposing choice are apparently arguing that MSAD 38 is NOT a choice community to begin with, because the district seems to think that it has an "exclusive contract" with Nokomis that is binding on all students unless they get a waiver from the the MSAD 38 school board. This policy seems to contradict state law, which says that "Students whose parents reside in a school administrative unit which contracts for school privileges under section 2701 may attend the contract school." That is they MAY attend, but can't be forced to by either the state or the school district. Opponents of choice in the Etna-Dixmont area evidently feel otherwise.

Legal hairsplitting like this, intended to put an end to a generations-old tradition of school choice, is likely to become more common as reorganization efforts move forward. The time for supporters of school choice to organize and dig in for a fight, therefore, is now.

Posted by Steve Bowen at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received this press release today from the Small Business Administration. In a nutshell, their new study finds that energy costs matter more to small businesses than for large businesses. This is particularly important in Maine since the economy is dominated by smaller businesses. As a result, Maine's economy is more vulnerable to higher energy prices than other states.

For Release: April 22, 2008
Contact: John McDowell, (202) 205-6941
john.mcdowell@sba.gov
SBA Number: 08-09 ADVO

Small Firms Hit Hardest By Rising Energy Costs

Manufacturing And Commercial Sectors Top The List

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Small firms are hardest hit by rising energy costs, according to a study released today by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S.
Small Business Administration. The small manufacturing and small commercial sectors top the list of burdened industries, on an energy cost per value of industry shipments and an energy cost per sales basis.

“This report shows that, on a disaggregated basis, energy prices can affect different industrial sectors in different ways,” said Dr. Chad Moutray, Chief Economist for the Office of Advocacy. “Previously, most research in this area had focused on the macro level. With this report, the spotlight turns to individual industrial sectors and the small firms within them.”

The report finds that for 10 of 17 manufacturing sectors for which data were available, small firms spent considerably more for energy than large firms did, on a per value of industry shipments basis. For food manufacturers, leather and allied products manufacturers, and computer and electronic products manufacturers, the costs per dollar of output were more than double those of their larger counterparts.

The author also finds that in 26 of 31 commercial industries studied, small firms have higher energy expenditures on a cost per dollar of sales basis. The median commercial sector industry has a small entity energy cost per sales ratio that is 2.7 times the ratio for large entities.

The report, Characterization and Analysis of Small Business Energy Costs (http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs322tot.pdf), written by E.H. Pechan & Associates with funding from the Office of Advocacy, uses available data to analyze the impact of changing energy prices on various sectors of the economy.

For more information, a complete copy of the report and tables of analyzed industry sectors, visit the Office of Advocacy website at www.sba.gov/advo.

The Office of Advocacy, the “small business watchdog” of the federal government, examines the role and status of small business in the economy and independently represents the views of small business to federal agencies, Congress, and the President. It is the source for small business statistics presented in user-friendly formats, and it funds research into small business issues.

###

The Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is an independent voice for small business within the federal government. The presidentially appointed Chief Counsel for Advocacy advances the views, concerns, and interests of small business before Congress, the White House, federal agencies, federal courts, and state policy makers. For more information, visit www.sba.gov/advo, or call (202) 205-6533.

** To sign up for Advocacy updates via RSS feed, visit http://feeds.feedburner.com/sba/rAIO **

** In order to receive e-mail notices of Advocacy's press releases, monthly newsletter, small business research, statistics, and regulatory news visit http://web.sba.gov/list. **

Posted by J Scott Moody at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In all the furor surrounding the legislature's $53 million tax day tax increase, it may have been overlooked that even though it took them three and half months to do so, the legislature did eventually pass a bill on school consolidation. The bill that was enacted, LD 2323, contained pieces of two other bills, the original LD 1932 and LD 2280, which was one of the Committee's own bills.

LD 1932, as everyone will recall, was the Education Committee's original bill to enact a handful of technical changes to the consolidation law. LD 2323 enacts those changes, which include:

- Allowing local cost-sharing agreements, which was seen as the major impediment to consolidation
- Allowing minimum special education subsidy receivers to remain eligible for minimum subsidy if they join a new regional school unit
- Removing the 2 mill minimum requirement, which was resulting in major cost shifts.

The new LD 2323 also includes some of the elements added to LD 1932 by the Education committee, such as:

- Allowing an exception for some units of 1,000 to 1,200 students (in isolated rural areas);
- Clarifying the roles and responsibilities of local school committees and regional school unit boards and the relationship between the two (local school committees can remain, but have limited influence and no budget authority)
- Allowing school property to remain in local hands if agreements are worked out regarding maintenance, etc.

Before being passed, LD 2323 was amended by House Amendment "G", which included language from LD 2280 and which makes largely inconsequential technical changes to the law. It does move the final deadline for voter approval of a consolidation plan from November of this year to January 30 of 2009, which now represents the final date by which voters must approve a reorganization plan before penalties take effect. It also makes some technical changes to the budget validation process, but does nothing to postpone or exempt towns from the budget referendum requirement. All Maine voters will get the chance to approve their local school with a referendum vote.

To deal with the whole "school union" issue, which sunk to original LD 1932, LD 2323 contains this provision:

"The bill authorizes the Commissioner of Education to approve plans for alternative organizational structures under the school reorganization law. To approve a plan for an alternative organizational structure, the commissioner must find that the plan will satisfy the purposes of the school reorganization law including: consolidation of system administration; consolidation of administration of special education, transportation and business functions; adoption of a core curriculum; and adoption of consistent school policies, school calendars and collective bargaining agreements."

In other words, rather than proscribe acceptable alternate consolidation arrangements, such as school unions, the law gives the commissioner the authority to approve some variation of them, as long as the plan meets with her approval. Though this vests quite a bit of authority with the commissioner, it may, at the end of the day, be the best solution given the wide variety of school structures in place all over the state.

So what to make of all this? The changes in LD 2323 do indeed make the law more workable and give it quite a bit more flexibility than was originally in put in place. The budget validation process remains in place, which is the one element of the law that many of us believe holds any hope of generating savings for taxpayers. School choice remains protected as well, though that is not stopping merging districts from making it an issue.

Voters should watch carefully what happens next. With the legislature now mercifully in adjournment, the focus returns to the local level, where the reorganization committees now head back to work. They have from now until January 30 of next year to get some kind of reorganization plan approved.

Posted by Steve Bowen at 07:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the legislature's most recent tax-increasing outrage dominating the news from Augusta, it may have escaped the attention of the public that as of yesterday, the 17th, our intrepid legislators are getting paid $100 per day in Special Session pay.

The legislature has been in session since early January, but in the three-and- a-half months since then, the majority Democrats, who control the House and Senate and therefore set the agenda, evidently could not complete the work of making everything they touch worse. So, ever since the statutory adjournment date, which was the 16th, they have been collecting special session pay in addition to the salary, expenses, and benefits they already received for their service thus far this year.

(Special Sessions have costs far and above the extra pay for legislators - estimates are that each Special Session day sets taxpayers back $50,000.)

If they ever do decide to adjourn, we can perhaps only then make an account of what their work, or lack thereof, has cost us. I suspect we'll find that the $52 million in tax increases that they enacted on Tuesday, (tax day, appropriately enough) is only the start of it. At the very least, though, their work over the past two days has cost each and every one of us $100 per legislator, per day.

Enjoy the weekend!

Posted by Steve Bowen at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The fun never stops in the State House. Apparently out of revenge for the veto of LD 1932, the Maine House last night passed a bill to repeal the consolidation law in its entirety. In its original form, the bill, LD 2281, would have substantially watered down the budget validation requirements contained in the school reorganization law. MHPC testified against the bill vehemently, and it came out of the Education committee with all three senators opposed, meaning it faced certain death when it reached the Senate.

Last night, though, the bill was amended in the House, striking out all of its original language and replacing it with language repealing the consolidation law. It passed, 73 to 59, and is now awaiting action in the Senate.

That's not all. Upon issuing his veto of LD 1932, the governor submitted a new bill, LD 2314, which contains the original elements of LD 1932 before is was literally amended to death by the legislature. That bill came to the House floor last night, as all bills do, to be assigned to a committee. Rep. Jim Schatz (D-Blue Hill), an ardent opponent of consolidation and one of the few Democrats to vote against the law last year, then made a motion to kill the new bill outright before it could even be sent to the committee. The bill was promptly tabled before a vote on his motion could be taken, and awaits further action today.

Clearly, the governor's veto of LD 1932 has not been taken lightly in the House, where tempers, on the Democrat side in particular, are running high. Democrats in the House and the Governor thus find themselves in a fascinating standoff at this point. The governor can veto any action the legislature takes and be pretty confident his veto will be upheld. They can kill any bill he puts forward, as was attempted last night, and he can make no changes to the consolidation law, which is in dire need of changes, without their support.

With only days remaining in the legislative session, what will happen next? With the November legislative elections looming over the horizon, who will give in?

Get your popcorn and stay tuned...

Posted by Steve Bowen at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)