The Education Committee meeting wrapped up earlier yesterday afternoon. We learned a few important things from the meeting today. The following is a quick look some of the things that have come out of the meeting.Charter Schools:
Commissioner Gendron stated the Maine Department of Education will not be perusing any sort of charter legislation this session. In Gendron’s opinion lack of charter schools is not a priority for acquiring Race to the Top funding. There were other issues blocking Maine’s access to the funds that pushed charter schools to “the bottom of the list” according to Gendron. This despite the fact that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said last June he would, “come down like a ton of bricks on states that treat charter schools unfairly.” Gendron went on to say later in the afternoon some of the state’s schools follow the “innovative school models” set by the Race to the Top. She failed to name any that actually did qualify.
Budget:
With a curtailment order coming soon from Governor Baldacci, the Committee discussed how to best deal with budget cuts. Ideas ranging from early retirement, dividing cuts among local districts, and reforming job training were batted around.
School Consolidation:
After lunch talk turned to the much debated school consolidation. As we reported earlier, Superintendents Roger Shaw and Quenten Clark spoke out against the how school consolidation had been mishandled up to this point. Clark blamed the DOE for the problems so far. The DOE tried to tackle a complex problem understaffed and with no clear goals claimed Clark. School consolidation would have been more successful if the state had simply told districts to present a significant savings plan and left superintendents alone to get the job done said Clark. Sen. Carol Weston (R-Montville) agreed that the law required some tweaking. Weston urged that the law be worked on next session. Skip Greenlaw of the Maine Coalition to Save schools was optimistic about the future of consolidation. “The day after the election I talked with one of the members of the Education Committee,” said Greenlaw. “He led me to believe that the committee is very sympathetic to the issues we talked about. Something has to happen, or the state is going to be torn apart.” Steven Bowen of the Maine Heritage Policy Center had a different impression saying, “Instead, those opponents are here today advocating for various changes to the law, most of which have been debated before – eliminating penalties, changing minimum size requirements, etc. The committee appears unmoved..”
Alphabet Soup:
The DoE seems to be a huge fan of acronyms. Some committee members found the DoE’s work with EPIC (Education Policy Improvement Center) on reviewing course syllabi from each course controversial. Concern seemed to be focused on the fact that the consulting firm was from “away”. Are we really going to waste time going there? The state has shelled out $750,000 to EPIC for their services. Committee members did not seem to want to take a risk on RISC (Re-Inventing Schools Coalition). RISC is part of the DOE’s push toward a standards-based and building connections with to Maine’s Learning Results. The committee were concerned about the cost and whether or not the program actually makes a difference. RTI (Response to Intervention) and RttT (Race to the Top) were also discussed.
There you have it. Hattip to Steve Bowen for liveblogging the meeting. The Kennebec Journal has more on charter schools and consolidation this morning.
