AUGUSTA -- The association representing Maine's school boards has endorsed an effort that calls for repeal of the state's school district consolidation law.

Maine School Boards Association members passed a resolution at their fall conference Oct. 23-24 backing a coalition's effort to land a repeal question before voters in November 2009. The group's members are also calling for legislators to repeal the consolidation mandate during their winter session, a move that would render the ballot question unnecessary.

The resolution reaffirms the association's support for the repeal effort, which members voiced in the fall of 2007.

This year, members took up the resolution approximately a week after Maine Coalition to Save Schools members had said they submitted more than 61,000 signatures to the state in hopes of forcing the 2009 ballot question.

Meanwhile, voters across the state will weigh in at the ballot box today on tediously crafted local plans for rearranging their local school districts.

"The basic reason, I think, is the frustration on the part of many school boards across the state with the law, the way it was enacted," said Maine School Boards Association Executive Director Dale Douglass. "The conclusion that many of these boards have drawn (is) that savings are not going to be part of the equation for several years, if then."

The state's school district consolidation mandate, passed in June 2007, is an attempt to cut school administrative costs by reducing the number of districts in the state from 290 to 80.

Under the timeline the law designates, residents must approve merger arrangements at the polls by Jan. 30, 2009, and the mergers are then to take effect by July 1, 2009.

Districts required to consolidate, but which fail to, face cuts in state subsidy as penalty.

Douglass said the school boards association would testify before legislators this winter in support of repeal.

"I think what has to happen is, if the law is repealed, we hope the governor and the Legislature do what should have been done when this law was started," he said, suggesting officials plan more closely with educators and local district officials.

Skip Greenlaw, who leads the Maine Coalition to Save Schools -- the group that launched the petition drive -- said he welcomes the school boards association's support.

"I think there's going to be a whole lot of coordination," he said.

If a repeal goes before voters in November 2009, nearly all districts will have completed the work of consolidation, according to Steve Hayes, a Readfield School Committee member who has served as an at-large director for the Maine School Boards Association.

"We will have moved forward and achieved efficiencies," he said.

The repeal effort, Hayes said, is not the right reaction to what some see as a disagreeable law.

"It doesn't really address what happens to the many communities who have, in good faith, gone ahead," he said. "It's, unfortunately, a circumstance where it's a simple reaction to what might not have been the most well thought-out law."

Just days before voters were to take up some 18 consolidation plans going to Nov. 4 referendum, Education Commissioner Susan Gendron on Oct. 31 issued a public defense of the consolidation law.

"Denounced by some as a one-size-fits-all solution, the reorganization planning has been shown by others to be anything but," she wrote.

The dozens of committees at work around the state shaping consolidation plans have adapted their plans to their communities' needs, Gendron said. And they have found savings and ways to improve educational programming, she said.

"One of the reasons the process has been so challenging and time-consuming locally is that the law left to local planning committee members some very important decisions," Gendron wrote.

The law has become more palatable after several rounds of amendments, said Phil St. Onge, of Winslow.

Still, he predicted a number of consolidation plans would be rejected at referendum today.

St. Onge said the school boards association's anti-consolidation resolution was a positive development.

"I think the Legislature has to take a long, hard look at whether this law is achieving what it's supposed to achieve," said St. Onge, who has served on the committee planning Winslow's schools merger with Vassalboro and Waterville. "There's way too much stick and not enough carrot in this law."

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, Ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com