MECHANIC FALLS – School Committee members, administrators and teachers were astounded at Tuesday night’s Mechanic Falls School Committee meeting as they listened to plans to implement an array of new state-mandated assessment tests.

Union 29 Assistant Superintendent Bill Doughty presented the planned tests, known as the Local Assessment System.

Doughty said the school union had three to four years to come up with 17 assessment topics per grade, more than 400 topics systemwide, or risk losing state funding.

Doughty said most of the bill would have to be paid by the town, as the state has promised to contribute only $18,000 to date.

While several topics could be combined into one test, no one present doubted the size of the task.

School Committee members questioned the cost and the impact on teaching.

“I truly appreciate the infinite wisdom of the people in Augusta,” said committee member Terry Arsenault. “But what they consistently fail to grasp is that we don’t have the money. And you can’t take away instructional time to do this; it kind of defeats the purpose.”

“We’re going to have to hire secretaries for the teachers, just to keep up with all of this,” said School Committee Chairman Dan Blanchard.

“Yeah,” interjected third-grade teacher Valerie Emery from a group of a half-dozen or so teachers attending the meeting. “It’s called evenings, weekends and vacations.”

Teachers, already miffed about having worked without a contract since 2001, continued to point out the added burden.

“One of the concerns is that we are getting paid the same salary as two years ago,” said arts teacher Kellie Whitten, “and now we have all this additional work.”

Doughty said Maine, along with several other rural states, opted for the new assessment test to give more control to local schools over the content and time frame of standardized tests. Otherwise, a top-down, one-size-fits-all test would have been imposed. He said the decision was made with the consent of, even at the bequest of, teachers and administrators.

“We may have shot ourselves in the foot, with the best of intentions,” said committee member David Griffiths. “I don’t see this going anywhere but trouble.”

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