Vermont on Maine's fast track?

First, my apologies for the lack of Report Card updates over the past week.

Second, does this sound familiar?

There's a state where, according to the education commissioner, there are too many schools, too many administrators, too many teachers and too few students.

"We don't need as many superintendents as we have now. We don't need as many principals as we have now. We don't need as many teachers as we have now," that education commissioner said last week at a Statehouse gathering.

The words sound as if they could belong to Maine Gov. John Baldacci or Education Commissioner Susan Gendron. But they come from Vermont Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca.

Vilaseca has been discussing the virtues of school consolidation for the past six months, since he was appointed Vermont's top educator. The calls for streamlining aren't new. But Vilaseca says he's discussing cost-saving measures with the intention of getting results.

The circumstances in Vermont are akin to some of the circumstances Maine is facing: small schools with shrinking student populations. But Vilaseca's approach to consolidation is likely to differ from the Pine Tree State's.

Vermont's approach, for one, would be based on incentives rather than the penalties on which Maine's is based. Vilaseca is also seeking buy-in from taxpayers and school leaders, the Times Argus of Montpelier reports, before laying out specific plans.

In addition, consolidation in Vermont is shaping up to focus more heavily on closing the smallest schools, rather than simply closing administrative offices. While schools have closed in Maine since the state's consolidation mandate took effect, the closures weren't supposed to be a direct outcome of consolidation.

Vilaseca is also talking about changing what schooling looks like. Students need to have more options, he said, and schools need to offer ways for students to learn outside the classroom.

That sounds a lot like Maine's efforts to reshape graduation requirements.

Vilaseca, then, could be setting the stage for a series of reforms Maine has pursued with mixed success. Perhaps Vermont will figure out how to get it done.