With a major amendment to the school consolidation law pending in the Senate that would give local school boards more power, but not achieve the 80 districts statewide the governor wants, both sides are using the Legislature's mid-session break this week to try and sway votes.

Just one switch could change the outcome since the Senate last week voted 18-to-17 in favor of the amendment. That amendment is attached to a bill supported by the administration that allows cities and towns to design their own cost-sharing agreements in a new regional district - an option viewed as critical if state mandated school consolidation is ever to move forward.

Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Hancock, who introduced the amendment, said he knows the week-long break between the first vote and second allows time for more lobbying.

"I know there is that sense that leaving some time in between allows opposing forces to try and undo what has been done," he said, but it also allows time to strengthen support for the amendment.

The close tally in support of empowered local school committees surprised many, with 13 Democrats, including the chairman of the Education Committee, voting against the wishes of Gov. John Baldacci and his commissioner of education. All the Democrats in the Senate supported Baldacci's original school consolidation law last year.

Five Republicans also voted in favor of the amendment, including Sen. Kevin Raye, R-Washington County, a staunch opponent of consolidation. He is trying to get more of his Republican colleagues to back the amendment in case Democrats switch their votes.

The amendment comes up for a second vote when the Legislature returns next week.

Education Commissioner Susan Gendron has come out strongly against the amendment, which gives communities the choice of creating a network of local school committees united under a union form of governance or going with a fully consolidated regional school district governed by a regional school board.

Gendron says allowing unions creates more school districts because a local committee with the power to hire and fire and raise its own funds legally constitutes a separate school administrative unit. There currently are 122 districts in unions statewide.

Information being circulated by the Department of Education to legislators and the media says unions cost more money because they tend to manage some of the smallest districts in the state and don't achieve economy of scale.

The cost per pupil is higher in unions, the administration says, by $1,009 per student in K-8 districts and by $1,385 per student in K-12 districts.

Education Committee Chairman Sen. Peter Bowman, D-York, who has been lobbied to change his vote, says he's not buying the cost argument.

"The argument is unions will cost more money and some go further and say they have less than desired academic performance," Bowman said. "It is my belief that good teachers, principals, superin-tendents and leadership can turn both of those around."

As a freshman legislator, Bowman led the Education Committee through a tumultuous year in 2007, when Baldacci's school consolidation law was finally passed as part of the state budget. It calls for no more than 80 districts statewide, down from the current 290.

Bowman said he believes it's time to amend the law and heal the rifts it caused between urban and rural Maine - where most of the smaller schools and unions now exist.

"I want to play my part and heal the North-South, rich-poor and urban-rural divides that are out there in the state," he said.

The amendment allows unions - of between 1,000 to 2,500 students or more - to create regional school union boards to hire a superintendent, manage central business office functions, oversee transportation and special education and agree on a core curriculum. Local school committees, however, would control local school budgets and teacher salaries - meaning spending community by community could vary greatly.

Under the existing school consolidation law, which communities are supposed to be implementing now, a regional school board would negotiate a district-wide teachers' contract and create a shared school budget.

"In any structure that allows a regional school unit or regional union board to delegate to local school committees the authority to hire, fire, negotiate or raise funds, the costs will be higher," according to the fact sheet sent out by the administration.

A coalition representing Mount Desert Island, which currently is under a union, argues that if the cost-per-pupil is higher it is because more money is being spent in the classroom on educational programs the communities want.

House Majority Leader Rep. Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, who represents part of Mount Desert and helped write the union amendment, says it's not clear what will happen to the proposal once it comes from the Senate. The key, she said, could be the Republican vote.

"I don't think this is partisan," she said, adding, "There's overwhelming support among rural members."

Rep. James Schatz, D-Blue Hill, is a member of the so-called rural caucus, and a stalwart critic of Baldacci's school consolidation law. He said he will probably vote for the union amendment initially, but plans to ultimately vote against it and other expected amendments to the school consolidation law because none go far enough.

"The more I see…the more attractive repeal is," Schatz said.

None of the amendments do what he wants which is to substantially extend the timeline on school district consolidation, repeal the penalties for those that don't consolidate and require the Department of Education to create cost-sharing agreements that hold harmless the member communities.

"All these little fixes," he said, don't go far enough. "It stays a bad thing."