[Local-Maine-Schools] Consolidation plan resources

[George Crawford]

As these plans come up for people to vote on and in the public "informational meetings" someone should come up with a fact sheet about the law and its impact on towns and schools in general. What I am thinking about is a sheet with the pros and cons such as the subsidy loss for voting no versus the loss of local control for those that used to be in Unions and are going to RSUs. Also the limited voting power of small towns on RSU boards. Perhaps it could be in Microsft Word format and be customized for different meetings. I feel that a lot of scare tactics and famous DOE "carefully chosen words" as Jim Rier put it once are going to be used to get these things passed. The repeal effort I still hope succeeds but I feel that we still have to send a message to Augusta besides that. This point all the subsidy from the state going into one pot and being up divided by the new districts vs. going to towns also needs to be stressed. I thank MDI for their site and all the work for AOS amd think that their system is making the best of a bad law. We still need to get the state to repeal this thing. If many are voted down it sends the Governor and Legislature a message a strong message. People need to know the facts. It needs to be brought out at the meetings and stressed to the public. Not just the rosy picture of the DOE and the rosy picture the RPCs are supposed to project to get these governance plans passed by the voters. 
George Crawford 
Harrington, Maine  

On Monday, September 29, 2008 10:28 AM, Dick Atlee <atlee at umd.edu> wrote:
>In Josiah Wilson's "call to arms" concerning the MSAD5/50 situation, he 
>wanted to include the actual plan, but it was too big for email messages 
>transmitted by this list.  Brian Hubbell points out that, while probably 
>many of the plans are available locally, such as 5/50's at
>
>  
>http://www.town.south-thomaston.me.us/government/school_consolidation/
>
>all the plans that have been submitted to the state, approved or 
>otherwise, and the commissioner's response to them, are available on a 
>comprehensive page at DOE's site:
>
>    http://maine.gov/education/reorg/plansandresponses.html
>
>with an excellent county-by-county summary of the current situation on 
>Brian's site at
>
>    http://mdischools.net/Table_RSUs.htm
>
>Dick Atlee
>SW Harbor
>
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