MEA's Guidelines for Regionalization

As MEA maneuvers through the political maze of regionalization, Executive Director Mark L. Gray articulated a set of basic principles to guide our advocacy efforts:

The Status Quo is No Longer Acceptable!

"The extreme tax sensitivity in Maine combined with a slowly declining school age population, an aging general population, and the continuing migration of our state’s population toward the southern counties and service center communities have combined to put severe stress on many schools, school districts, and communities throughout our

state. Maine’s public school structures must adapt to these conditions in order to continue to provide a high quality education to our students. In addition, our public schools must become part of the solution to our state’s tax burden."

MEA Members’ Employment Rights Must Be Protected

"We must provide continuity of employment for all MEA members; continuing contract status for all MEA members who are currently on continuing contracts; continuity of MEA members’ employment rights and benefits, e.g. accrued benefits, seniority, etc; and, continuity of responsibilities to retirees/former employees with accrued benefits"


MEA Members’ Collective Bargaining Rights Must Be Protected

"We must provide continuity of exclusive representation rights; continuity of existing collective bargaining agreements; and, a redefinition of "working conditions" to include those issues that will impact MEA members during the transition period, e.g. transfers and reassignments, length of the school day including hours of employment, etc."

Educational Programs and Services Must Continue to Be Public Services

"We must provide continuity of the public services that are provided to our schools and by our schools to their communities. The privatization of schools and/or school services is not acceptable."

The Actual Number of School Administrators Must Be Reduced and Administrative Services Must Become More Efficient

"The financial resources that are saved by streamlining school administration must be redirected to school classrooms and used to bring teachers’ salaries to the national average."

MEA lobbyist Steve Crouse says that legislative leadership is pushing the Education Committee to report out a compromise regionalization bill by mid-March but he thinks that will be difficult to achieve given the complexity of the task.

Crouse expects that there will be some regionalization of services without mandated consolidation of schools. MEA supports a coalition bill that calls for regional planning alliances developed by local citizens that would achieve administrative savings of 10% by 2010.