Have you ever heard one of those brilliant ideas from some government official that you just had a knee jerk reaction of "Ewww...I really hate that idea." But you weren't really sure why?
I do that every once in a while, then I have to go scrounging around to find out more about it and figure out why I don't like it. Sometimes I decide that it's just cause I don't like the politician and the plan really doesn't suck all that bad. And sometimes I dig around and eventually find just exactly what it was that was bugging me about it and I start really hating it and telling everybody so and why. I'm in the digging around part right now on this school redistricting plan of the governors. And honestly, the fact that the wack job gun dealer likes it doesn't help any. He put up a blurb on his gods cursed sign earlier in the week.
Here's the governor's plan in a nutshell:
"Baldacci has proposed replacing Maine's 290 school districts, and the jobs of the 152 superintendents overseeing them, with just 26 districts and superintendents by 2008. He anticipates doing so could save about $250 million over three years by drastically cutting administrative costs."
There are three or four other, less drastic, restructuring plans in the works as well, which leads me to believe that it's going to happen in some form or another no matter what. As the mother of a special needs kid the whole concept of school restructuring makes me nervous, just cause we have enough trouble with things the way they are. Change isn't always a good thing, and saving money isn't my first consideration when I think of education. When I hear saving money and education in the same sentence I think about the day my mom called me and told me they did away with the music program at my old high school.
But, I'm trying to be open minded about this, so I've read what the proponents have to say. Only cutting administration, funneling the savings back into the schools, yadda, yadda, yadda. Then I read the opponents' opinions. Not too impressed with the response from the Kennebunks. They're most concerned about their property taxes being set by folks in Biddeford, and their schools being brought down to the level of the po' folks schools. Meh. Rich folks suck.
Local control seems to be a big issue, although I have to agree with the pros that I'm not too concerned about whether we have local control over how many paperclips schools purchase each month. However this will also effect student/teacher ratio and class size, two factors that are very important to quality of education. Not to mention the loss of jobs for all the office staff in the superintendents offices that are going to be closed.
And I have yet to see anywhere a break down of exactly how this plan is going to save that kind of money. Laying off a bunch of underpaid teachers and administrative assistants doesn't seem like an effective way to save a quarter mill.
I am still looking it over. I'm hoping to find somewhere what the ramifications for special education are going to be, if any. I'm not sure what special ed is like in the rest of the country but here we have Maine Learning Results that the teachers have to keep up with, which the special ed kids have a Personalized Alternate Assessment Portfolio (PAAP) Process tool that is used to measure their progress through. I wonder if/how this is going to be effected.
My guess is I'm not going to end up liking the governor's plan. But one of the other one's might be the lesser of five evils, I suppose. We'll see.
at 2:31 PM :: ~#~
