[Local-Maine-Schools] Too much football

[Brian Hubbell]

Re: Local control of education should have its limits, Elinor Multer
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=167181&ac=PHedi

QUOTE:
>Local control of education should have its limits
>For example, it asserts community prerogatives
>are more important than students' interests.

>...local school groups and the organizations that
>represent them have failed to recognize reasonable
>limits for that control, even when it subverts local education.
>...so the politicians took what seemed to offer
> the only available route. They tied consolidation
>to the budget and rammed it through.

This is nonsense.  Ms Multer apparently has been watching too much
football if she believes that degree of opposition is proof of the
value in brute-force school consolidation

Listed below are most of the high-performing schools in the state.
Every one of them presently operates under what Ms. Multer
characterizes as the impoverishment of local control.

These schools run the full range of sizes.  But what each has in
common is a direct local relationship between school, governance,
town, and taxpayers.

Asa C Adams School, Orono
Bangor High School
Boothbay Region Elementary School
Brunswick Jr High School
Cape Elizabeth High School
Cape Elizabeth Middle School
Coastal Ridge Elementary, York
Conners-Emerson School, Bar Harbor
Dresden Elementary School
Easton Elementary School
Easton Junior-Senior High School
Eastport Elementary School
Edgecomb Eddy School
Ellsworth Middle School
Falmouth Middle School
Farwell Elementary School, Lewiston
Frank H Harrison Middle School, Yarmouth
Gorham High School
Great Salt Bay Community School, Damariscotta
Harrison Lyseth Elementary School, Portland
Jonesport Elementary School
Jordan Acres School, Brunswick
Longfellow School, Brunswick
Longfellow School, Portland
Madawaska Middle/High School
Marcia Buker School, Richmond
Monmouth Academy
Mount Desert Elementary School
Mount Desert Island High School
Mount Vernon Elementary School
New Sweden Consolidated School
Orono Middle School
Palermo Consolidated School
Perry Elementary School
Pond Cove Elementary, Cape Elizabeth
Raymond Elementary School
Robbinston Grade School
Scarborough Middle School
Veazie Community School
Waterville High School
Wayne Elementary School
Wells Elementary School
Wells Junior High School
William S Cohen School, Bangor
Wiscasset Primary School
Yarmouth Elementary School
Yarmouth High School

Source:
Dr. David L. Silvernail; The Identification of Higher and Lower
Performing Maine Schools, School Profiles and Characteristics; Maine
Education Policy Research Institute; May 2007
http://www.usm.maine.edu/cepare/Reports/IdentifyingHigher.pdf