Schools merger will need do-over

by Matthew Stone, Staff Writer, Kennebec Journal, July 11, 2008

READFIELD -- The push toward school district consolidation must start anew for the Fayette, Winthrop and Maranacook-area school systems following a tense district planning meeting Thursday night.

By a one-vote margin, the members of a committee crafting the three school systems' merger chose to adopt an alternative administrative structure for their proposed district in an effort to preserve local control within a larger school system.

As a result of the 9-8 vote, however, the consolidation planning committee that has worked for approximately a year to develop a merger plan must now dissolve, and the six towns planning to merge must return to the first steps of the process.

The planning committee can no longer proceed with its work because it was chartered to plan a regional school unit.

In developing an alternative structure, it would be completing a different mission.

The state Department of Education will require new notices from the towns stating -- again -- their intent to merge with their chosen partners.

"We are trying to do what's right for our communities and our towns and, most of all, for our kids," committee co-chairman Dale Glidden, of Winthrop, told a frustrated planning committee following the vote.

The towns now must work under a rushed timetable.

New districts have a Jan. 30, 2009, deadline to hold a referendum allowing residents to vote on their local mergers. Merged districts are slated to begin operating on July 1, 2009.

By opting for an alternative organizational structure, the committee is taking advantage of a provision legislators approved in April that amended the 2007 state law requiring school district reorganization.

The law's new provision is vague about the shape of an alternative structure -- and proponents of increased local control over regionalized school systems were largely in favor of the amendment.

Committee members at Thursday night's meeting appeared to favor an administration much like that of a model consolidated school district, with one school board and one superintendent. A few members suggested multiple school boards.

Either way, the arrangement would noticeably change, for example, the structure of the Maranacook-area school system, which has one superintendent reporting to six different school boards planning six separate budgets.

The committee, however, balked Thursday at the perceived ability of a large regional school board to have an outsized say in deciding to close a small town's elementary school.

"I wouldn't want to move to a town without an elementary school," Winthrop member Rae Giampetro said. "That's ridiculous. And even if I don't have kids, it affects property value."

Most committee members appeared to favor the consolidation law's promise of streamlined school district administration.

The planning committee's move Thursday marks the latest complication for a committee widely regarded to be making fast progress after Gov. John Baldacci signed school district consolidation into law in June 2007.

But the planning group did not meet between March and June as members waited for state legislators to pass and Baldacci to sign off on a special cost-sharing arrangement to allow the towns to more equitably distribute costs.

By the time committee members resumed their meetings, one consolidated district was already operating and voters in two other proposed districts had weighed in on their local arrangements by referendum.

Maranacook schools educate students from Mount Vernon, Wayne, Manchester and Readfield.

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