Staff Writer
Educators, superintendents, principals and members of the public gathered in the Limestone Community School’s cafeteria on August 14 to discuss the proposed plan of consolidation for local schools. In order to meet new requirements put into effect by the Maine Legislature, the towns of Caribou, Limestone, Fort Fairfield, Caswell, New Sweden, Stockholm, Westmanland and Woodland must be consolidating in some way.
Last Thursday night’s committee meeting included an overview of the “regional school unit,” or RSU, and the possible ways of getting all the schools together. Following the overview, each superintendent stood and presented to all those attending, explaining the different sections that they and their subcommittees had been working on such as the possible plans for consolidation and the budget for the new systems.
There are a few possibilities available to the school systems. They aren’t limited to being forced into one school board, but they are able to have their own local school boards, if they choose to do so. Representatives from the local school boards would report back to the RSU.
Later in the meeting, the group broke off into separate subcommittees: governance, assets, and finance transitioning, to discuss the proposed plan and to come up with their own ideas as to what would be the best route to consolidation.
When they returned 45 minutes later, each group reported what they had discussed. The governance committee said that they needed to get together again to discuss whether or not they wanted separate, local school boards, or just one larger RSU board. The assets committee said they had some clarification questions that needed to be addressed by superintendent, Bill Dobbins. The finance transitioning committee had an intense discussion about what would occur if one school decided they didn’t want to be involved in the consolidation. The board said that there are options, and that no school is absolutely required to join, but encouraged to do so with financial incentives.
For the plan to be approved and meet the state’s requirements there must be at least 1,200 students in the consolidated school system. The committee will be meeting again to discuss their findings and to decide on one specific plan to take to voters in November. Their next meeting will be held on Thursday, August 28 at 7 p.m. at the New Sweden School. After that meeting, the committee hopes to meet more often, scheduling weekly meetings at the different schools involved, trying to get everything ready and approved for the ballot.
