Update appended.

The June 1 deadline for Maine to submit its second-round Race to the Top application is approaching, and those districts and local teachers' union affiliates that are signing onto the state's bid for up to $75 million in federal money aimed at education reform have made their decisions.

As I reported Sunday, and as Maine School Management also pointed out, 82 school districts turned in the memorandums of understanding needed to share in the potential award money, and to take on the reform efforts outlined in Maine's Race to the Top application.

In the 82 districts signing on, 24 local teachers' unions affixed their seals of approval. In addition, 64 chairmen of the local school boards added their signatures. (Only the district superintendent's signature was required, but more buy-in was preferable.)

There are even more break-downs worth noting in the data I received from the Maine Department of Education. That's because the school districts turning in memorandums of understanding could choose which of the outlined reforms they wanted to adopt:

• All the participating districts signed onto the work of enhancing standards (i.e. signing onto the Common Core) and improving student assessments. Virtually all signed onto the initiatives regarding the use of data to improve instructional quality, including making more data available to researchers.

• Buy-in starts to break down when it comes to the measures Maine proposes to take to improve teacher and principal effectiveness. Some 70 of the 82 participating districts are supporting work to design and implement new evaluation systems and conduct evaluations annually.

• The participating districts appear eager to use those evaluations to inform professional development (77 of 82), but not as many are pushing to use evaluations to "inform compensation, promotion and retention" (55 of 82), to "inform tenure and/or full certification" (61 of 82) and to "inform removal" (68 of 82).

A quick scan of the districts signing onto Race to the Top showed it was slightly more likely for districts that didn't have local union signatures to sign onto the more controversial evaluation elements (Princeton, Scarborough, Five-Town CSD of the Camden-Rockport area, Lisbon, Maine Indian Education, Vocational Region 10, Medway, Millinocket, Woodville, York, SAD 29 of Houlton, SAD 31 of Howland, SAD 35 of Marshwood, SAD 49 of Fairfield, SAD 51 of Cumberland, and RSU 2 of Hallowell were examples).

Augusta, SAD 28 of Camden, Wells-Ogunquit CSD, SAD 33 of Frenchville and others were examples where unions signed on and districts decided against participating in those Race to the Top elements. The trend, however, didn't hold in all cases. SAD 22 of Hamden, Georgetown, Portland, Vocational Region 8, AOS 91 of the Mount Desert Island area, SAD 6 of Buxton, SAD 8 of Vinalhaven, SAD 19 of Lubec, and Westbrook, for example, had union sign-ons and opted to use evaluations to inform compensation. In addition, there are a number of districts that aren't participating in the more controversial uses of evaluation data that had no union sign-on.

• The other initiative on which buy-in breaks down is support for turning around the lowest performing schools. That item attracted support from 62 participating districts. Notably, only Portland Public Schools, SAD 29 of Houlton and SAD 59 of Madison -- three of the 10 districts who had schools named low-performing in March -- signed onto Race to the Top, and all of them agreed to participate in work to turn around the lowest performing schools. SAD 29 and SAD 59 were among the three districts that rejected federal school improvement money after earning the low-performing label.

UPDATE, 5:50 p.m.: The break-down documents are available as PDFs here and here.

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