Many people across Maine have asked me how I intend to vote on the contentious issue of school consolidation — Question 3 on next Tuesday’s ballot.
I answered that question in an television interview with Augusta schools superintendent Connie Brown several weeks ago, and again just this past Friday in response to a question from blogger Derek Viger of The Maine View. Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, we need to sit down and figure out the answers to much bigger questions about K-12 education in Maine. There are much bigger issues at stake here than whether or not we consolidate schools. The important questions are whether our schools are producing excellence. Are our kids getting a quality education? And, are we doing so at costs we can afford to pay?
Please read the rest of this blog to see what I have said on this critical challenge.
There’s are much bigger issues at stake here than whether or not we consolidate schools in Maine. The important questions are whether our schools are producing excellence. Are our kids getting a quality education? And, are we doing so at costs we can afford to pay?
Those are the central questions facing our education system. And the answers are going to be different in different parts of the state. Because of that, consolidation isn’t the right answer everywhere.
With that said, I’m going to vote to sustain the enacted school consolidation law because I think it’s a set of tools that we just can’t throw out. I think we need to take what’s there and fix it.
The issues to me with Maine’s K-12 education come down to equities, excellence, efficiency and cost-effective performance.
Every kid in Maine should have an opportunity for an excellent education. I believe every kid in Maine should be able to stay in school and to be excited about it. I don’t believe we can write off kids in one part of the state or another part of the state. That’s just not the right approach. As governor, I simply won’t permit it. Our kids are too important. They need and deserve more from us.
Now, we need to figure out how to correct inequities and achieve excellence in a more cost-effective way, because in the next few fiscal years in Maine, we are going to have a budget crunch the likes of which we’ve never seen before. There’s going to be a lot of pressure to cut spending on state aid to K-12 education because it’s such a big part of our state budget. When that happens, some towns in Maine are going to be just fine because they can raise the money to make up the difference. But there are a lot of towns in Maine where they are not going to have that opportunity. So the gap is going to grow and not narrow.
We need to figure out how to narrow that gap – even in tough budget times — because all Maine kids are our kids, and every single one of them is entitled to a great education.
