Charter schools in governor's court

I reported last week that Sen. Peter Mills, R-Cornville, had filed a bill request in hopes of sponsoring legislation to improve Maine's position in the federal Race to the Top competition among states for $4 billion in education innovation grants.

Mills' bill would have included language to legalize charter schools in Maine, one of 11 states that don't allow the independently run schools. The Obama administration is pushing states to give up their bans and limits on charter schools as a condition for eligibility for the innovation grants.

Maine's Legislative Council met last week to decide which bills lawmakers will debate this winter, and which ones will go back to the drawing board. Mills' bill wasn't one of the 129 proposals to advance to the next round. The proposal failed in a 4-6 vote.

What does this mean for charter school advocates who hope this season will be the one when Maine passes charter school legislation?

Gov. John Baldacci was a supporter of the latest charter school bill to fail in the Maine Legislature. That one passed the House this past spring but was stopped in the Senate.

David Connerty-Marin, a spokesman at the Maine Department of Education, said state education officials haven't made any decisions yet about whether the Baldacci administration will sponsor a charter school bill.

"We are continuing to review the evolution of the Race to the Top criteria and what options we may have," Connerty-Marin wrote to me recently in an e-mail. "We are hoping that U.S. DOE (Department of Education) may rewrite the criteria to be more flexible about charter schools, regardless of what we end up offering or not offering for legislation."