Beyond School District Reorganization: A Vision for Education Reform

Just before the December 1st deadline for Maine’s school units to submit their district reorganization plans, the Maine Department
of Education released a long-awaited proposal to amend the embattled consolidation law, claiming at the time that the
suggested changes would “remove barriers to consolidation.” The department’s proposal amends some of the school funding
provisions of the original legislation, but otherwise leaves the controversial law in place. In so doing, the department suggested
by its actions that they consider the “barriers to consolidation” to be largely technical in nature, ones that could be
remedied with a relatively narrow piece of legislation.