Resisting consolidation does not equal CHOICE

[Elizabeth Johnson]

I was so excited that MHPC was going to take on school choice, but I am afraid you have missed the boat and been blinded by the same provincial thinking entrenched in the heavily administration laden government of Maine. School choice is NOT having every municipality have its own educational fiefdom; that provides parents with no more choice than if the decisions were being made at the state level. There is still a final authority-between the local superintendency and the board doing its beckoning-and it doesn’t matter what parents want, unless what they want is the same as what the district wants to offer. School CHOICE is vouchers and charter schools; CHOICE is offering OPTIONS from which to CHOOSE; CHOICE is having parents decide what is best for their child and having the funding follow the student. How did MHPC take the concept of choice and vouchers and charter schools and turn it around to be resisting one of Maine’s rare attempts to reduce government in favor of the constituents?

The most effective states at offering public education offer true CHOICE-which leave the final decision to the education consumer, not to the administrator. Furthermore, these highly functioning education states are not micro managed at municipal levels; public education is structured in countywide frameworks and benefit from the reduced overhead of less administration. More funding goes directly to the educational programs. For example, look at Wake County, North Carolina. Don’t fight consolidation because of a delusion that government at the local level offers any more choice than at a county level. It only offers more government. Please take the time to examine closely the functionality of countywide public school systems throughout the country; look closely at the highest functioning state programs and see if they are micro managed.Look at California, Texas, New York. I believe you will be surprised. Maine does NOT need to resist district consolidation; and Maine DOES need to offer true choice, the kind where the consumers-parents and students-decide what works best for them.

[Stephen Bowen]

First, with regard to MHPC's opposition to consolidation, we has been saying for years that Maine's schools need to be more efficient. We opposed the one-size-fits all solution proposed by the governor and have proposed not one, but two alternative approaches that would have led to substantial savings, based on proven models, without creating larger, less accountable regional school units with which the state has no experience.

Our opposition to the governor's plan was motivated in part by the threats we anticipated it would pose to consolidation. I wrote last August that choice would almost certainly face danger from consolidation and that has come to pass. The state's last attempt at consolidation, under the Sinclair Act, lead to the creation of SAD's and the end of school choice in communities across Maine. Our support of choice was one of the major elements driving our opposition to the governor's consolidation plan.

I took your advice I spent some time looking at Wake County schools. Nothing I found indicates that they have school choice there. The only choice-related issue I found with regard to Wake County was controversy over that district's attempt to force students into year-round schools and its resistance to demands from parents that they be given a choice of year-round or traditionally-scheduled schools from which to choose. I guess I don't understand what you would have us learn from Wake County. I taught in Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the largest school systems in the nation. It was heavily bureaucratic and offered no school choice whatsoever. It also spent frightening sums of money and was governed by a school board that was completely politicized. Winning a seat on the school board there was analogous to winning a state senate seat here. This is what you would have for us?

I don't know of a single model in the nation where a large, bureaucratic school system offers school choice of the kind you describe. A few of the urban systems, such as New York and Boston, offer charter schools, but that is far from the universal choice we both advocate. My experience has been that the larger the school district, the less accountable it becomes and the less sensitive to the needs of parents and students. I find it hard to believe that Maine moving in the direction of some kind of county-run school system would result in more school choice. My guess is it would end school choice altogether for the many Maine families that have it now.

Is there a large school district of the kind you describe that allows the "true choice" you call for?