In the last legislative session, I was among a group of legislators who opposed the school consolidation plan put forward by the governor. We succeeded only in getting some good changes made, but we did not have the votes to prevent it from passing. The idea I had, along with some other legislators, was that the law require only consolidation of superintendents' offices (often called Central Offices) and the administrative tasks that usually go with them, leaving local school committees intact, preserving local ownership of school buildings, and leaving teacher contract negotiations to the local school committees.

In this new legislative session, because there is so much continued dissatisfaction with the current school consolidation law, the Education Committee gave legislators another chance to bring up ideas that had failed to make it into the bill, and I once again proposed this more limited form (central office only) of consolidation. The idea would be to give the Regional Planning Committees a new choice to consolidate only the central offices of their districts of their current school governance.

As it turns out, three members of the Education Committee also have put forward the same idea, and debate on this concept now will become part of the discussion in this session on how to improve the school consolidation law.

In a nutshell, if it were to pass, this idea would allow the local planning committees to form consolidations of central office functions only, and would preserve the integrity of local school committees, local ownership of school property and local teacher contracts. These local aspects of school management would be supported by consolidated central office administration, which could assist local committees in managing these tasks. The choice of going in this direction would be up to the Regional Planning Committees.

The reason we need to focus on containing administrative costs is clear. Enrollment has been dropping over the last twenty years, and will continue to drop over the next ten years to a projected 177,000 students. During roughly the same time period, the number of administrators has increased by 400 in the K-12 system statewide. We now have approximately one administrator for every 11 teachers. Three different reports over the last three years called for reducing administrative costs in the K-12 system. None of these reports said that there were too many school committees, or that teachers were paid too much, or that we could do away with local involvement in the governing of schools. Yet these items were included on the school consolidation bill. The idea of my proposal and of the minority report of the education committee is to focus on reducing the cost of school administration, while leaving the rest of the system intact.

The proposal for a coal-fired refinery and electric generation plant in Wiscasset seems to have dropped to the back burner. However, one issue raised by the proposal remains of concern; under current Maine law, new coal fired plants could come on line and increase our state's emissions of CO2 gasses, when our stated goal is to decrease them. This is due to a loophole in the current set of laws governing greenhouse gas emissions. I have submitted a bill, which would close that loophole. It would allow the State Department of Environmental Protection to regulate the emission of CO2 for coal-fired plants that emit more than ten thousand tons of CO2 gasses per year. This bill, if passed, would prevent Maine from backsliding on our state's commitment to help slow the process of human-caused climate change. The bill is still being drafted in final form, and will go before the Committee on Natural Resources sometime this session. I will keep you informed on the dates.

As always you can contact me at 633-0570, send mail to me at 656 Back River Road, Boothbay, ME 04537, or e-mail me at bmacdon@roadrunner.com with your thoughts on any of the above issues.