Hundreds of people – many employed by state school systems or serving on school boards – came to Augusta Monday to denounce Gov. John Baldacci’s plan to reduce the number of districts in the state from 290 to 26, with some saying his hidden agenda is to close small schools.

In fact, it was two hours into a massive public hearing, organized by the Legislature at the Augusta Civic Center, before any member of the public spoke in favor of the governor’s proposal.

At one point things got so negative that Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Peggy Rotundo admonished the crowd, asking them to be respectful of the governor’s office.

“I ask that you show respect for the chief executive. We can express our opinions without personalizing things,” she said.

Sen. Peter Mills, R-Somerset County, who last year ran for governor, did praise Baldacci for shaking things up.

“He deserves credit for kicking the chicken coop as hard as I’ve ever seen it kicked. Where those hens will come to roost” Mills said, “remains to be seen.”

Seven school regionalization plans in all were presented briefly at the start of the hearing, but it was Baldacci’s that received the most attention. The Education Committee will come up with a version that blends the best aspects of all the proposals and send that to the full Legislature for a vote.

Baldacci’s plan is the most dramatic and would reduce the current number of school districts and local school committees from 290 to 26 by July of 2008. The state’s 152 superintendents – many of whom oversee more than one district – would lose their existing jobs and 26 would be hired to oversee the new consolidated districts. Those districts, as configured around the existing vocational-technical regional districts, would range in size from 1,824 students in Calais to 19,996 in Portland.

Playing off the acronyms that have been given to the school regionalization plans, Dick Gray, a school board member from Ellsworth, said Baldacci’s plan was “a LTNI – Little Thought, No Input.”

Another school board member from Oakland, Mike Gosselin, called the plan “idiotic, insane and insensitive,” particularly given the short 17-month time frame to implement it.

Superintendent Jim Morse, who runs School Administrative District 47 in Oakland and lives in the town of Unity in Waldo County, said the plan was not thought out.

“I can’t believe he put a single school district together called Waldo County,” said Morse. “The number 26 is bizarrely unreal; 26 is too few.”

“I stand before you as an advocate of regionalization,” Morse said, noting that he was a member of the Maine Children’s Alliance Board that put out a plan calling for the creation of 26 planning alliances through which districts would come up with their own administrative savings.

The Maine Children’s Alliance proposal is one being considered by the Education Committee. There also is a proposal from the state Board of Education to create 60 to 65 school districts of between 3,000 to 4,000 each. Those districts would be proposed by a special commission, whose plan would then be subject to an up or down vote of the Legislature, with no amendments allowed. Another plan calls for creating a commission to come up with districts of around 2,000 students each.

Mills, a member of the Education Committee, added to the list of proposals, taking the planning alliances a step further. He borrowed from a report put together by former state Rep. Stephen Bowen of Rockport, now working for the Maine Heritage Policy Center. Bowen called for creating “educational service districts,” where existing school districts and boards stay in place, but form cooperatives to get savings on some administrative functions and education programs.

Mills would like that plan to require the service districts, which he calls cooperatives, to ultimately suggest consolidated districts within their own regions with no fewer than 1,200 students.

Charlotte Bates, a former member of the Scarborough Board of Education, said she opposed the governor’s plan because it usurps local control, but would consider service districts to save taxpayers money.

The governor’s plan “merely diverts funds to support other things…and looks to close rural schools,” Bates said. “Education service districts would go far toward savings costs while leaving education decision-making to local boards.”

Katherine Ragot of Cutler in Washington County said she got up at 4 a.m. to make it to Monday’s hearing because she wanted to speak out in support of small schools.

“The ugly truth of EPS (school funding formula) is small towns are forced to close schools or raise property taxes,” Ragot said, leaving her father with the proposition of losing his home to rising taxes or making sure his grandchildren get a good, local education.

“Do rural children deserve less because they are few?” she asked the assembled legislators.

Other speakers worried about what impact the governor’s plan would have on special education programs, and some worried about their own jobs.

“I wanted to put a face to the countless support staff in central offices,” said Debbie Rideout, an administrative assistant to the superintendent in Scarborough. They are not covered by unions or eligible for severance pay, but will lose their jobs under the governor’s plan, she said. “Five or more administrative assistants will be vying for one position. The others will be looking for jobs in the private sector. In southern Maine that won’t be a problem,” she said, but in other parts of the state it will simply put people on the unemployment rolls.

“I feel totally unappreciated for all the dedicated service I have given,” she said.

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