AUGUSTA -- The Maine Department of Education is responding to consolidation critics before voters decide the fate of the state's remaining district merger plans.

Consolidation opponents have raised doubts about the mergers' potential savings.

"Concerns have been raised about bringing all teacher contracts to the same salary level, with the cost then offsetting any savings," Gendron wrote recently in a letter to superintendents.

The state is forcing the state's 290 school districts to consolidate into approximately 80 in an effort to cut school administration costs.

Bringing teacher salaries to the same level in a combined district, according to University of Maine education professor Gordon Donaldson, amounts to a hidden cost of consolidating.

But it's unlikely local districts will have to assume the cost of higher salaries, according to Gendron. The state will likely pick up the tab, she said, because the Department of Education will base a district's state funding on increased labor costs across the consolidated district.

"The state formula is going to recognize a higher allocation," department spokesman David Connerty-Marin said. "That means that the added cost is going to be picked up by the state for the amount (up to the state allocation)."

It's also premature to assume a merged district will immediately institute a uniform salary scale across the entire school system, Gendron said.

But it's unlikely districts will keep disparate salary scales for long, Donaldson said.

"The only way to really do that is to convince some teachers to receive less money for the same number of years of service as a teacher in the same district somewhere else," he said.

Even if teacher salary changes take away from overall savings, Connerty-Marin said, the salary adjustments would help the state achieve one goal of the consolidation process.

"(Consolidation) was about saving money, but it was also about education, and it was about providing equity to students around the state," he said. "When you have some of these small and rural districts that aren't able to match the salaries of the teachers in the community next door, they have a harder time attracting and retaining the best and brightest."

"If you teach in a low-end district that doesn't pay as much, you've got to be happy with the way it plays out," said Phil St. Onge, a Winslow resident who opposed the recently approved plan to merge Winslow, Waterville and Vassalboro school systems.

Steve Hayes, a Readfield school board member who helped design the proposal to combine the Maranacook, Winthrop and Fayette districts, said it's wrong to assume high added costs from equalizing teacher salaries in merged districts.

Voters in the Fayette, Winthrop and the Maranacook-area towns of Manchester, Mount Vernon, Readfield and Wayne decide on the merger Jan. 27.

"I can attest from the experience within the Maranacook system that consolidation does not result in contracts that retain only the most expensive elements of each," Hayes said.

"We and ... the bargaining units made a concerted effort to homogenize what were very different contracts," Hayes said. "We did so in a fashion that rebalanced wages and benefits, with a very, very small overall increase."

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435

mstone@centralmaine.com