SALEM – The MSAD 58 school board unanimously approved drafting a letter of intent to the Department of Education Thursday evening, notifying the state about the possibility of forming an school union-like organization with MSAD 74.
MSAD 74, consisting of the towns of Anson, Embden, New Portland and Solon, would also need to submit a letter to the state in order to proceed with the effort. The districts have been in preliminary discussions over the past few months about forming an Alternative Organizational Structure, or AOS, which would function in a similar fashion to a school union. Each district would retain a board of selectmen, unlike the Regional School Unit option, and would minister to the day-to-day operations of their own facilities, employees and students. Despite the flexibility, the AOS, if accepted by the DOE, would allow both districts to avoid paying the noncompliance subsidy penalty. For MSAD 58, that equates to somewhere above $130,000 annually.
Past meetings have led to collaborative efforts such as the sharing of MSAD 58’s special education director, Laureen Olsen, between both districts. This has saved the local district $35,000 annually, and allowed MSAD 74 to get an experienced director without funding an entire position.
The AOS would require both districts share some positions, such as a single superintendent, but offers significant flexibility in the degree the overreaching AOS would impact the individual districts. Several issues that arose during MSAD 58 and the now-Mt. Blue Regional School District, such as balancing teacher contracts or creating massive “super boards” would be mitigated under an AOS. Other issues, such as Mt. Blue’s RSD larger size, wouldn’t exist at all.
“I don’t feel like the little fish in the big pond,” Director Mary Jane Thorndike of Phillips, said.
Other directors spoke of learning from the aborted RSU process with Mt. Blue.
“It has to be a vision of the people [on the school board] that are there,” Director Gerald “Mike” Pond Jr. of Strong, said. “It needs to not be top-down to work.”
MSAD 74 Superintendent Ken Coville, who attended the meeting, said that he believed there existed “great interest” on his district’s board to get the DOE’s noncompliance issue resolved. He also spoke to the relationship the two districts had developed regarding the special education director position.
MSAD 58 Superintendent Quenten Clark said that Coplin Plantation and Highland Plantation would be notified of the discussions. He noted that considerable time could be spent hammering out potential issues, prior to any sort of decision. Formation of an AOS would take multiple votes of the board and MSAD 58/MSAD 74 voter approval, in addition to approval by the DOE, to take place.
In other business, the board agreed to meet twice a month starting in September. The second meeting of each month would be spent exclusively on discussion of the future of the district’s schools, and would rotate through the different facilities. September’s second meeting will be at Stratton Elementary.
