Raye/Mills on schools

 Senate Minority Leader Kevin Raye, R-Perry, called the school district consolidation law "flawed and unworkable" Thursday during debate on a spate of anti-consolidation bills.

 “It’s indescribable the feelings of anger and alienation that I hear from people all across rural Maine,” he said. “This is the single greatest example of a law that has split this state into two Maines.”

 Fellow Republican Sen. Peter Mills of Cornville agreed that the law is a “clumsily formulated bill” but disagreed that it created two Maines.

 Mills said Maine schools are costly because the state has “the second smallest ratio of teachers to students in the U.S.”

 “We have way too many teachers and too few kids,” he said. “We have the most horribly inefficient K-12 system.”

 The Senate passed a bill to delay penalties for school systems that reject consolidation, but put off until later a vote on the initiated bill to repeal consolidation.