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Maine school budgets are being curtailed. Superintendents are scrambling to find ways to balance their spreadsheets. In many cases, this is going to have to involve reducing or eliminating professional development days and travel, among many other cuts.
Question: We know the downside, but what are the opportunities?
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Perhaps this will be a significant enough crisis to allow opportunities to be taken, but I doubt it. If high schools moved from a time-in-grade system to a standards continuum, you wouldn't need as many tracks or sections at high school level. (Consider how each grade level enrollment is artificially increased by repeating students. You wouldn't have that.) Small high schools struggle with providing AP, electives, languages, etc. Properly managed and supported, distance learning could make a real contribution to bringing the cost of those electives within reach for small high schools. It's happening in other states already. We could rise to the challenge of crisis budgeting, and make changes for the benefit of students (particularly in high schools, which are showing their age, conceptually.) I think we mostly won't though, not because we can't, but because most educators I meet (especially principals) couldn't describe it, can't see outside the box beyond a buzz word or two. When it comes to changing high schools, I don't think the citizens are the primary barrier. I think it's us.
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