The state’s Board of Education has suggested a dramatic departure from the status quo for public schools.

Last week, the board recommended reducing the number of school districts from 286 to 35, extending the school year, expanding the state’s laptop program and increasing teacher pay. Other recommendations are more ethereal: encourage Maine residents to be more supportive of learning and provide an aggressive support network to help teachers stay current.

The ideas are provocative. But at this point, they’re still just ideas.

What almost literally jumps off the page is cost. While a longer school year, more computers and better compensated teachers sounds good, it’s hard to imagine how the state could come up with the money necessary to pay the bill.

Which brings us to perhaps the most controversial of the ideas explored: School consolidation.

Maine has been through consolidation before. The conventional wisdom is that fewer school districts can operate more efficiently than smaller ones. But even after Maine reduced the number, costs have continued to go up. The argument might be that costs would have gone up even faster without consolidation, but that’s pure speculation. The board says that almost 20 percent of the state’s education budget, $270 million a year, could be saved through efficiencies of scale. Maybe. Maybe not.

Bigger is not always better. The state might find itself with fewer superintendents, but a larger number of assistants. Building costs might go down, but transportation costs could go up.

Based on 2004 numbers, there are 204,712 students in Maine public schools. Reducing the number of school districts as recommended would mean, on average, each one would serve more than 5,800 students. And, of course, the question boils down to which schools will be closed.

The board’s 72-page draft report has a lot of information to chew over, much of it rightly focused on how to prepare Maine’s students for a changing world. But Maine’s school system has been under construction for more than 200 years. It will not be reinvented quickly.

The recommendations will be good for starting arguments. It remains to be seen whether they will prompt change.