DANIEL BARKER

As a current school board member in a three district SAU, this bill would bring us great relief! The superintendent position has too much power to control each district within the SAU, and this allows the position to ignore entire districts so long as he has enough votes from the others to get a new contract. This bill restores local control by putting a single board in direct control of the schools they were elected to manage. This bill still allows each district to offload the common admin functions that are currently in the SAU primarily, which will make those functions much more cost-effective. In addition, extending some contracts across an entire county of districts will give more bargaining power to the schools resulting in reduced costs. We just did this within our SAU, and the impact will be greater with a wider base. Please pass this legislation so we can focus on educating our kids rather than the politicking that goes on among three boards and the superintendent obfuscation layer.