An under-card on this November’s star-studded referendum lineup, Question 3 — on whether to repeal Maine’s school district consolidation law — demands attention. Since its introduction in 2007, consolidation has arguably sparked more legislative disagreement than any other issue.

Now, voters will decide the question: to keep the law, or do away with it. This simple matter belies the complicated nature of consolidation, its effects on communities across the state, and the hodgepodge of exemptions, qualifications and rejections the law has seen during the past two years.

Opponents of consolidation try to paint the law as inflexible to community concerns, but its track record indicates the opposite. More than half of students in Maine are in districts exempted from consolidation, while many others have enjoyed special dispensations from lawmakers or the Department of Education when their consolidation plans either failed or went awry.

The Legislature has delayed penalties for nonconforming until this referendum is decided. It’s hard to say, then, that school consolidation is too rigid, when its terms have been compromised, negotiated, legislated and stalled at almost every turn. If anything, this law has proven to be far too weak.

Yet this is not enough to call for its repeal. Though its application has befuddled and angered certain communities and led to calls of inequality and lost local control, the long-term goals of consolidation are more valid and important today than in 2007 when Gov. John Baldacci called for it.

Maine has too many school districts for its declining school-age population. As pupil counts decrease, the costs of delivering education must as well. This can come through reducing classroom opportunities for Maine’s kids, or bigger class sizes, or spending less on the administrative overhead of districts.

Consolidation targets that important last issue. And while we sympathize with the rural districts for which consolidation seems an unwieldy mandate, the alternatives seem worse. Maine should stay the course that consolidation has started, and not allow work of the past two years to perhaps come undone.

We urge readers to vote “No” on Question 3, and let the consolidation law stand.

This is not a positive appraisal of the law, however. Consolidation requires many legislative tweaks before it earns that, and the fact that so many districts remain nonconforming after either multiple votes or pure refusal shows it could be toothless. Once upheld, the next question is how it should be enforced.

We suggest it be done gently and rationally. In our area, for example, SAD 58 in Kingfield is nonconforming and faces penalties, while Rangeley has benefited from a special law exempting it from consolidation, and Bethel was allowed to be alone as a “doughnut hole” district, according to the DOE.

Would it be fair, then, to crack down on Kingfield? Not really.

And those districts that wish to pay the fiscal penalty for nonconforming should be allowed to do so, without question. That’s how the law is designed; it is a model of local control.

It’s the quagmires that need attention. The Durham-Pownal-Freeport union needs attention, for example, because residents of the smaller rural towns have real concerns of their representation and future. A compromise should be negotiated, or this union should be dissolved and started anew.

This is the crux of our support: While there are problems with consolidation, we feel they are more easily handled individually than by sweeping away the law. If that was done, those early promises of consolidation, like the Rumford-Mexico-Dixfield-Buckfield union, could be lost.

School consolidation is a work in progress, this much is true. But for Maine, it is work that should continue.

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