Now that the protracted debate about school consolidation at least is off the ballot and out of the headlines, maybe, just maybe, Mainers on both sides of that issue will shift their attention to some of the more fundamentally important questions about K-12 education in Maine.

• Why are we spending so much on public education in Maine and apparently getting so little in return?

• Teachers are the most expensive component in our under-performing systems. Maine has great teachers in our public school systems, some of the very best in America. But why do we have so many teachers per pupil?

• Why aren’t we measuring excellence, performance and efficiency and rewarding school systems that achieve excellence at the lowest cost?

• Teachers, legislators and the governor are wailing over some of the deepest cuts in state aid to public education in history. So, why did those same teachers, those same legislators and the same governor just walk away from from an opportunity to collect millions and millions of dollars in federal funding for our public schools?

Maine voters interested in answers ought to examine the cozy relationship between the Maine Education Association (the teachers’ union) and the leadership of the Democratic Party in Maine.

Last week Education Commissioner Susan Gendron informed the Legislature’s Education Committee that the Baldacci Administration will not submit to the Legislature a bill to permit charter schools in Maine.

I wrote Governor Baldacci last week asking him to reconsider his decision. I also emailed Senator Bill Diamond (D-Windham) and Representative Emily Cain (D-Orono), the chairs of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, where the funding cuts for public schools will be determined, and I urged them to take action to bring charter school legislation back before the Maine Senate in order to potentially offset some of those losses.

The decision not to reopen the charter school issue is tragic, crassly political and wrong. It constitutes a huge blow to our best educators and to parents all over Maine who have pushed for this legislation. They believe that charter schools are a chance to innovate and experiment in ways that ultimately can benefit all schools in Maine. (It’s not as if Maine schools couldn’t stand a little innovation. Just recently a bipartisan report from the Center for American Progress and two other think tanks ranked Maine 44th among all states in educational innovation, concluding that “Maine does a poor job managing its schools in a way that encourages thoughtful innovation.”)

This decision is also terribly costly. A law permitting charter schools would make Maine eligible to receive a share of $4 billion of funding through the Race to the Top program. Race to the Top was created by the Obama administration earlier this year in an effort to bring more schools up to par with national education standards. Maine is now one of only a handful of states that won’t be eligible for any of that money.

It is hard to find anyone opposed to a law that would simply authorize (not require) charter schools – other than the powerful teachers’ union and its allies in the Maine Democratic Party.

Why is the teachers’ union opposed? Because the union contract wouldn’t govern hiring, salaries and benefits in charter schools.

Why is that a threat to the teachers’ union? Because Maine’s ratio of classroom teachers to pupils now has become the second highest among all the states, fully 25 percent worse than the national average.

Too many teachers, too little innovation, not enough excellence… and a refusal to take federal money in the midst of a budget crisis because some or all of those circumstances might have to change. This is what Maine parents want for their kids?

The Democratic Party in Maine was once a great reformist party. For more than 25 years, from its rebirth in the late 1940s, the Democrats were a party committed to maximizing opportunity for all the people of Maine. Sadly, the party has become an inbred shadow of its former self. Saddled with so many political obligations to so many interest groups that it seemingly can’t keep them straight, the Democratic Party leadership is apparently incapable of embracing new ideas and committed only to maximizing opportunity for whichever one of its allies is next in line at the public trough.

Partisanship and close ties to special interests – in this case the teachers’ union – once again have trumped the public interest in Augusta: no charter schools, no Race to the Top funding.

This time, the real losers are our kids.