The deed has been done.

The state budget is passed, and Gov. John Baldacci's staff is saying it includes the biggest overhaul of public education in Maine in more than 50 years.

The plan calls for 80 school districts in Maine, which is way less what than we have now. It has a lot of carrots and sticks I won't detail here: Cutting funding for schools that don't find consolidation "partners;" offering incentives for some that do; giving a deadline for deciding. Etc.

Baldacci's central point is that the amount of money we spend on pre-college education has been growing steadily and even quickly, but our public school enrollment is dropping. He says we have a lot of great superintendents and other top administrators in Maine, but the number we have isn't justified by the number of students we have, at least not any more.

What do you think about all this? The plan no longer says (an early draft did) which school districts should merge with which.

I am not a native Mainer; I've lived here since 1995. My young daughters (two) both were born here and attend public schools, so my family has a big stake in all this.

Here's what I think: Consolidating school districts will happen in the aggregate. In Winthrop, where we live, the draft consolidation plan had "us" merging with: Hall-Dale, Maranacook and Monmouth. Those are good schools, and I think they'd say that about one another. I haven't heard much worrying about this in our town.

However, I really suspect that if, say, someone would ever suggest closing two of these four high schools (no one is saying this now), there'd be a battle royale over that. I attended a semi-rural high school in Pennsylvania with about 330 kids in my graduating class, and it never felt overwhelming to me. But if you're used to 50 or 75 in a high school class, you might rail against a merged high school with double that number. And if you are being pressured to merge with your sports-rival high school, well...

We also have heard that rural school districts remain concerned. I think that's because northern and Downeast Maine schools serve as cultural centers for fairly large land areas. That's true in some parts of Central Maine, too, but not to the same degree (my opinion). There's more to do here.

There were some odd "dance partners" in that draft list that I keep referring to. Our last hometown, Cape Elizabeth, was supposed to "merge" with South Portland. I think the Cape parents would secede from the United States (there are probably enough lawyers there to pull it off) before they'd OK that. Those are very different school districts with entirely different approaches to school spending.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours?