Is it any wonder that Maine failed to place in the federal Race to the Top education reform competition?

What a wake-up call.

One must ask what, if any, educational improvements have resulted from Maine’s long, costly school consolidation campaign? Maine still hasn’t tackled major revisions to our fragmented educational system.

Gov. John Baldacci’s initial proposal focused consolidation on the vocational-technical schools to reduce the 290 school districts to 26. Unfortunately, he folded in the face of legislative squabbling. After much time, effort and expense, there are now about 200 districts; that in a state with fewer than 190,000 public school students.

Maine reveres local policy making, i.e., “local control.” However, in education this causes each district to maintain top-heavy, local school administration, spending money better directed to the classroom. Before our uncoordinated attempts at consolidation, Maine had 150 superintendents overseeing 290 districts, each with its own curriculum, each conducting several labor contract negotiations, with a curriculum coordinator in most districts and more than 1,800 school board members statewide, each entitled to be paid.

The Sun Journal could help the cause of education reform by informing readers where consolidation now stands. How many teachers and pupils are there? How many districts, superintendents, curriculum coordinators and other non-teaching staff are there, and at what cost?

Such information might help guide Maine’s efforts to apply school funding toward teaching and learning, rather than to maintaining wastefully duplicative administration.

Judith Berg, Buckfield

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