Other superintendents and those who teach classes in school administration say O'Connor's proposal to transfer most financial oversight to the School Committee and city administration would be a significant change.
"That set-up would be unusual," said Richard Barnes, who teaches classes for would-be superintendents at the University of Southern Maine.
Barnes said he did not know of any other school department in Maine that separates financial and instructional management of a school system. He said a superintendent has to provide the overall view of how the two functions affect each other, how much money is needed to educate students, where it is coming from and the consequences of spending adjustments to meet unexpected costs or revenue shortfalls.
"Someone has to make the call, 'Yes we are going to cut field trips or we are going to lay off a staff member there,' " said Barnes, who has had O'Connor in his class.
He said school superintendents are all trained to bring those skills to their districts. He said Maine school superintendent certification requires superintendents to take a year-long school superintendent internship class.
Barnes said he requires students to sit through the entire budget-building and -approval process in a school district office and compare the process to that of another school district. Superintendents must also take a half-year school finance class to become certified, he said.
SUPERINTENDENT'S PLAN
On Wednesday, O'Connor unveiled a plan to address $2.5 million in overspending by the school department last year that calls for shifting financial management from the superintendent's office to the city administration. Her major responsibility would be to develop educational policies, design ways to put the educational policies into effect and draw up the proposed spending plan for the coming year.
It would be up to the School Committee to approve the budget while taking on the new responsibility of monitoring and managing the department's revenue and expenses, which is now part of O'Connor's job.
News of the shortfall in the school district's $82 million budget last year began to surface this spring. The revelation sparked a controversy that in the past two weeks led to the resignation of Finance Director Richard Paulson; a vow by the School Committee to launch an independent investigation into what went wrong; and the temporary takeover of the school finance office by the municipal finance department.
One superintendent said shifting oversight responsibility for the school district's finances would not necessarily lead to better management.
Taking the financial functions away from the superintendent did not make sense to Bruce Mailloux, superintendent in SAD 34, which includes the towns of Belfast, Belmont, Morrill, Northport, Searsmont and Swanville. The district experienced a budget crisis 18 months ago that Mailloux called eerily reminiscent of Portland's.
Like Portland, SAD 34 miscalculated its Medicaid reimbursement revenues, leaving the district's $22 million budget $900,000 in the red. The deficit led to the resignation of Mailloux's predecessor and 11 of the school board's 14 members.
"Our voters totally lost faith in our ability to handle finances," said Mailloux, who was the district's high school assistant principal and superintendent intern at the time.
Although "we would all like to be able to pass off the financial responsibility to someone else," he said, it does not make sense because someone has to decide whether day-to-day spending decisions make sense educationally.
Mailloux said he works closely with his business manager to scrutinize even the most minor expenses, such as whether to...
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