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Education Commission to Start Work

After a rocky start, the special commission charged with recommending improvements to Maine’s education system will get underway this summer.

Beardsley says it was a mistake to ban members of the public, the Legislature and the news media from the commission’s first meeting at the Blaine House. And he says all of the six planned meetings he hopes to schedule through the end of the year will be open.

Among the serious issues to be addressed, he says, are falling school enrollments, rising costs and inadequate test scores. And all the while, Beardsley says, teachers are being asked to do way too much.

Beardsley says he hopes the commission can reach broad agreement on some fundamental goals.

“If we could start by finding a few outcome areas of consensus, like closing the gap, making sure no Maine kid graduates from high school needing remediation when they go in to the military, the workforce or college,” he says.

Beardsley says a huge amount of money is at stake, with more than $3 billion a year being spent on the entire educational system, mostly funded by taxpayers. He believes that those costs are an incentive for those with differing political views on the commission to come together in solving some key problems.

“Everybody will probably have to give a little bit and if you can get that group together on one or two out of the 10 or 12 issues, boy, that really does some promise for the next legislative session,” he says.

Beardsley says it may be difficult to reach a consensus on any issue given the polarized political environment in the state, but he says that early discussions have shown promise for agreement on general goals such as improving the quality of education and the efficiency of the education system.

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.