I am just back from three weeks in New Zealand.  As I was leaving I filed a column that started:  “It is crunch time for school consolidation…” and went on to lay out five criteria by which to judge the plan being (at that time) crafted by the Education Committee.  It turns out you did not need my criteria to judge the product that emerged from weeks of hearings.  The Ed Committee basically flunked on all measures and was appropriately taken to task by all of the major newspapers in the state.  The Governor even took to the airways for a first in a series of weekly radio addresses to decry the Ed Committee’s efforts and ask:  where are the rest of the people of Maine.  Of course we already knew from an earlier survey that a majority of them favors school consolidation.

So what do we do next?  Let’s look at a few alternatives:

1.    Call in George Mitchell:  Senator Mitchell helped craft peace in Northern Ireland.  Surely he could pull all factions together and come up with a meaningful plan.

2.    Invoke the English tradition of a three-line whip.  The Governor is after all a Democrat.  Democrats control both houses of the legislature.  Do they ever talk to each other?  Is their anything called party-discipline?  The Governor may not have British parliamentary rules to apply, but did that stop Lyndon Johnson when party recalcitrants needed to be brought into line?

3.    Go back to the process recommended by Brookings and the Select Committee of the State Board of Education. This is the process that calls for the legislature to make one up or down vote on a specific school consolidation proposal developed by a specially-appointed commission.

4.    Appoint a sub-committee of the Appropriations Committee to come up with a new plan.  This has been proposed, and a sub-committee has been formed.

This exercise should not be as difficult as gaining the peace in Northern Ireland or solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem.  We pretty much know the right answer:  60 or so mandated districts with reasonably sized regional school boards and local advisory boards for individual schools.

Of course, someone once compared the legislative process in a democracy to making sausage:  it’s unpleasant to follow the process too closely.  If you did not have the pleasure of following the process by which the Education Committee came up with their proposal, trust me, it was not pretty to watch.  Of course, I was in New Zealand so I did not see it firsthand.  However, I have been through many similar exercises over the past ten years.  It is not something I would recommend for high school government classes because it would be a touch discouraging.  To their credit, the legislature has made it easier to track these hearings by providing an internet audio connection.  This has the advantage of allowing one to “multi-task” while keeping an ear on the proceedings.

So, I would like to ask each of you to cast a vote  for one of the four suggested alternatives.  You can do so by simply sending me an e-mail or by going to the on-line version of this column at www.pressherald.com, click on “Editorials” and scroll down to find my column.

Also, if this column has kindled your interest in getting closer to the legislative process, there is a hearing coming up that I can recommend.  The State and Local Government Committee will be holding a public hearing on LD1021, “To lower the cost of State Government” on Wednesday, March 28th, at 1:00 pm in room 216 of the Cross State Office Building.  This is significant because lowering the cost of state government is an aspect of the Brookings Reports’ recommendations on which the Governor has been slow to move.  Yet, if we are going to take costs out of school administration, largely local costs, shouldn’t state government costs be subject to the same level of scrutiny?

Meanwhile, please take a moment to cast your vote on the next step on school consolidation. By the way, New Zealand, with a population four times that of Maine, has one (national) school district.