By Ward Peck
Editor
    Cape Elizabeth School Supt. Alan Hawkins sat in his office on the second floor of Town Hall earlier this week thumbing through an information packet produced by the state’s Dept. of Education to explain the new “Local Schools, Regional Support” initiative. On one page was a photograph of Cape Elizabeth’s most visible feature, the Portland Head Light along with the phrase “We can do better.”
    Whether the coupling of the image and phrase was intentional, officials in Cape Elizabeth have expressed skepticism that the educational bang for the buck in Cape Elizabeth can be improved by merging the roughly 1,800-student school system into a “super district” stretching to Pownal and populated by some 20,000 students.
    While public education administration statewide is often described as inefficient and redundant, the Cape Elizabeth School system is consistently recognized as both high performing and cost-effective. In the recently-released results of Scholastic Assessment Tests (SAT) tests taken by the state’s 11th graders last year, which replace the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA), an average of 85 percent of Cape Elizabeth students met or exceeded the standards on the three-part test, placing the students among the state’s elite. Statewide, 46 percent of students met those standards.
    According to Town Manager Michael McGovern, the school system’s administration costs as a percentage of the budget are the lowest in the state– a record often emulated but rarely repeated elsewhere. Hawkins, a relative newcomer to Cape Elizabeth, places much of the credit for that record in the hands of McGovern and the development of Cape Elizabeth’s emphasis on intentionally blurring the line between municipal and school administration.
    “Cape Elizabeth has a tradition of providing administrative functions for the schools and town jointly,” McGovern said. “They maintain our buildings, we maintain their grounds and buses. We’re on the same computer and phone systems. There is a tremendous use of school buildings for community functions. Twice a week school buses are used to take elderly people shopping.”
    Other examples of the shared resources model include payroll administration, which is done by the school department, McGovern said.
    “One person does the entire payroll,” he said. “This month she will issue 1,000 W-2s– to election workers, referees as well as all town and school employees.”
    McGovern estimated the total annual payroll to be $14 million.
    “It’s a lot for one person to do alone. We looked at privatizing that function but no one could compete with how we do it cost-wise,” McGovern said, adding that the schools’ business manager, Pauline Aportria, also manages the municipal investments.
    “What happens to that?” McGovern asked of the Governor’s consolidation plan.
    While both McGovern and Hawkins expressed many  questions about the consolidation plan, those shared town/ school functions are exactly the functions the plan will take out of the hands of local school systems and be given to the regional school boards and superintendents’ offices.
    Hawkins, who spoke several hours before a planned presentation to school officials by the State’s education commissioner Susan Gendron, said he had more questions than answers about the effect of the plan on Cape schools. He said he was busy compiling as much information about the proposal, which he then planned to put on the department’s website (www.cape.k12.me.us).
    “My concern over the long run is being able to maintain the uniqueness of Cape Elizabeth Schools,” Hawkins said. “The goal is to equalize education in the state by pulling from the bottom up. But what will happen to the schools at the top?”
    In a town of means such as Cape Elizabeth, Hawkins said he is worried many parents who can afford it will decide to opt out of public education all together.
    “I already deal with the limitations imposed within the town budget decisions, Hawkins said as he wondered what will happen if the local school board goes away and is replaced by a seat at a board in which Cape Elizabeth has a less than one-tenth interest.
    As Hawkins considers questions he does not have answers to and entertained questions he has not considered, the consolidation plan moves forward. An implementation timeline produced by Gendron’s office calls for the election of regional school boards and regional superintendents to be hired by October of this year. But before any of that occurs, the legislature will have ample opportunity to influence how and to what degree regionalization is applied to the State’s public education system.
    The plan, contained in Gov. John Baldacci’s biennial budgets, which will take effect July 1, is currently being translated into legislative language.
    According to Tim Feeley, Communications Director for the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives Glenn Cummings (D-Portland) the budget will be first reported to the Joint Appropriations Committee by the end of the month. That committee will hold hearings and debate the language before reporting the budget to the full house.
    Steve Onos, a member of the South Portland School Board predicted whatever consolidation plan comes out of the legislature will not be nearly as far-reaching as the one proposed by Baldacci.
    “This is a wish-list for Baldacci,” Onos said. “He’s wishing to get 26 [school districts] and hoping to get 75.”
    Onos said he agrees with the concept of consolidation but said Baldacci’s plan goes too far and was structured with little thought.
    “The Portland district has 20,000 students and then there are some with 2,000 students,” Onos said. “He took the easy way out by basing them on the regional technology schools.”
    Onos said the South Portland School Department is “very efficient,” educating 3,000 students while employing just a superintendent and a business manager, but he did not rule out the South Portland School Department joining a regional district.
    “If we could consolidate with Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough, absolutely,” Onos said. “But to group South Portland with Pownal doesn’t make any sense.
    McGovern, Hawkins and Onos all said the proposal will not effect this year’s budget deliberations, already well underway, given that there are so many unknowns.
    “This throws a monkey wrench into everything we do,” Onos said.
    In addition to planning a budget that will overlap the consolidation proposal timeline, South Portland is also in the middle of a search to replace Supt. Wendy Houlihan who has announced she will leave at the end of the school year. Even though the board is seeking a replacement whose tenure may well measure a matter of months, Onos said the board will not abandon the search.
    “It puts us in a tough situation,” Onos said. We have to concentrate on the way it is now.”