BANGOR, Maine — The associations representing school boards and superintendents have a clear message for the candidates running for state office:
“There has to be a game-changing decision to put education on the front line.”
That is what Bangor School Committee Chairman Warren Caruso told lawmakers and candidates from the Bangor area as they discussed points brought up by representatives from the Maine School Management Association at a forum held at the United Technologies Center on Thursday night.
“We’re at a tipping point,” Caruso continued. “There’s nowhere for us to go except cutting educational programs.”
The forum was held to garner support for the association’s priorities from those who will represent Penobscot and Piscataquis counties in Augusta. It was one of nine forums that will be held across the state.
The first priority, as presented by Bangor Superintendent Betsy Webb, is using state money in a way that research shows is effective.
Webb told the 15 lawmakers and candidates that means funding programs that support economically disadvantaged students, professional development for teachers and pre-kindergarten.
The second priority is local control.
“Be careful when you send a mandate down that there’s funding attached to it,” said Kelly Bickmore, chairman of the Regional School Unit 22 board. RSU 22 serves Hampden, Winterport, Newburgh and Frankfort.
“We’re a rural state and one size does not fit all,” Bickmore said.
Bickmore said that decisions such as which students can transfer out of districts, daily and weekly school schedules and what curriculum is purchased should be left to the school board.
Webb made a presentation on educational funding, the association’s third priority.
“Despite the fact that a decade ago Maine voters said that the state should fund 55 percent of public education, this has not happened,” Webb told the group.
She said that relying on municipalities to raise more than half the cost of running the school “will widen the gap between districts that have resources and those that don’t.”
Lastly, Bickmore gave a presentation on the association’s stance on charter schools.
“We are not out to close the existing schools,” she said. There are six charter schools in Maine, including the first virtual charter school, which opened this month.
“We need to change the way that charter schools are funded,” Bickmore said. “We believe that the state should develop a separate funding stream for charters.”
At the moment, charter schools are funded through the home school districts of the students who enroll. School districts with students who attend a charter school pay the charter school an allocation, which includes state and local funding, for each student.
After the presentations, the lawmakers, candidates, school board members and superintendents broke into smaller groups based on Senate district.
Officials from Bangor centered their discussion on how to get more children enrolled in pre-kindergarten.
“How much money do you need?” state Sen. Geoff Gratwick asked Webb.
She said that she could enroll every 4-year-old in the city if she could offer pre-kindergarten for the whole day instead of a half-day, “which means I need more classrooms and another building,” she said.
Rep. Tori Kornfield, who taught at Bangor High School for 30 years, also participated in the group, as did Cary Weston, who is challenging Gratwick for state Senate and lauded the pre-kindergarten program in which his daughter is enrolled.