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Details will be released today on the merger plan, which would cost most superintendents their jobs.

By PAUL CARRIER Staff Writer January 5, 2007

AUGUSTA -- In a move designed to reshape how Maine's schools are run, Gov. John Baldacci will ask the Legislature to slash the number of districts from 290 to 26 and assign one superintendent to each, saving a projected $250 million over three years without closing any schools.

The sweeping administrative consolidation, which would eliminate the jobs of most of the 152 superintendents who oversee the state's public school system, is being greeted with expressions of support, concern and exasperation from lawmakers and education groups.

Baldacci touched on the proposal in his inaugural address Wednesday night. The administration plans to release more details when it unveils its proposed two-year budget today. But state Education Commissioner Sue Gendron said in an interview Thursday that the proposal would improve the quality of education, cut costs and streamline the bureaucracy without cutting the number of schools.

"We have a very costly administrative structure" in Maine that should be reworked to save money and ensure greater consistency in implementing the state's education standards, Gendron said. She said Baldacci wants to implement the plan within the next two years, suggesting that he will ask the Legislature to make the consolidation mandatory, not discretionary.

"We must support excellence in education, not excess in administration," Baldacci said in his inaugural address. "Maine has twice the number of school district officials per student than the national average. We spend $2,000 more per student than the national average, and pay our teachers $7,000 less. We can and we will do better."

In addition to consolidating districts, Gendron said the plan also calls for assigning a full-time principal to every Maine school, filling gaps that currently exist in some schools. She said her department projected three-year state and local savings of $250 million by looking at "a whole array of central-office functions" that would be consolidated, including payroll, care of buildings, transportation and business operations, among others.

Gendron declined to discuss the makeup of the proposed 26 districts, but said the administration has drawn boundaries and Baldacci plans to release that information today.

The plan drew a mixed response from education groups and lawmakers Thursday.

Mark Gray of the Maine Education Association, the union representing teachers, said consolidating the state into 26 regional school districts makes sense. But he said the Legislature should take three or four years to study and implement such a system instead of rushing into it without adequate planning.

Dale Douglass of the Maine School Management Association, a trade group for school district administrators, said there are too many unanswered questions to pass judgment on Baldacci's plan.

"People are just crying for the details behind this so they can have a reasonable response," he said of the superintendents and school boards in his association.

In the Legislature, Assistant Senate Majority Leader John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, praised the proposal Thursday, noting that the Canadian province of New Brunswick has only five school districts, and that Mainers know the state spends too much on school administration.

"If we don't find savings, I think the public is not going to be very happy with us when we know the savings are there" for the taking, Martin said.

Senate Minority Leader Carol Weston, R-Montville, countered that it's hard to believe consolidation would save $250 million over three years when the state's superintendents are paid a combined total of about $15 million to $16 million a year.

She said the state should consider incentives to encourage consolidation instead of imposing a mandate because "Maine prides itself on its home rule, its local control and its schools."

Maine spent $836.1 million on its public schools in the fiscal year...