At their May 9 meeting, the Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit 12 board of directors approved the draft agreement for Wiscasset to withdraw from the district.
The withdrawal was first set in motion when voters approved starting the withdrawal process last June. Committees from the RSU and Wiscasset have been meeting since December to complete a draft agreement.
The committees found agreement on the substance of their draft at their meeting on May 2 and worked during the next week to finalize the agreement’s language.
Of the 19 board members present at the May 9 board meeting, 17 voted in favor of the draft agreement, with Westport Island member Richard DeVries voting against and Wiscasset board member Mary Myers, who chairs the Wiscasset Withdrawal Committee, abstaining.
The Wiscasset Withdrawal Committee planned on sending the signed agreement to the Department of Education on May 15 for Commissioner Stephen Bowen’s review and approval. If he requires changes, the committees will go back to work – if not, the committees are hoping for a November 2013 vote in Wiscasset on actual withdrawal.
In the current draft agreement, Wiscasset would become its own stand-alone School Administrative Unit as of July 1, 2014.
Estimates from the Wiscasset committee’s educational consultants put the cost to taxpayers of operating the new SAU at $1.3 million to $1.5 million higher than remaining in the RSU.
The estimate is based on information provided by the RSU for the current school year, said consultant Ray Poulin on May 14. The actual number could be affected by what the would-be school board approves for a budget, and how many tuition students attend Wiscasset schools from other towns, he said.
“The other piece is dealing with the withdrawal agreement itself,” Poulin said. Barring any changes from the Department of Education, the draft agreement includes costs of roughly $1.48 million for Wiscasset to leave the RSU, he said.
Some of that $1.48 million would be in upfront costs, and some would be built into the new SAU’s budget for several years, Poulin said. There are no “long-term” payments as a part of the agreement, Poulin said.
One large portion of the $1.48 million to leave the RSU is paying teachers’ summer salaries for the summer of 2014, which would be roughly $734,000, Poulin said. This would need to be paid because the RSU picked up summer salary costs when the RSU was first formed, he said.
Final calculations on what the upfront and short-term annual costs from the withdrawal agreement would be have not yet been done because the Department of Education could require further changes, Poulin said.
Myers said she is looking forward to Commissioner Bowen reviewing the plan.
“I’m so confident in our consultants’ work, that they really picked through it. I’m pretty confident that it won’t be returned, but of course there’s the possibility that it will be,” she said.
If any items in the agreement seemed at risk of not being approved, the committees would have tried to work them out before submitting the plan, she said.
As more towns withdraw from RSUs across the state, new requirements from the Department of Education are showing up from one town’s process to the next, Myers said. Wiscasset is a new case, too, because it is first time the only high school with an agreement to accept any and all of a district’s students (sometimes referred to as a high school of record) has tried to withdraw, she said.
“I’m really relieved and excited that we’re this far into the process, and I definitely appreciate that the RSU found that it was agreeable terms that we had,” Myers said.
“I’m really happy with the withdrawal; I think it’s a fair plan that protects both parties and keeps continuity of education for all kids involved,” said Malinda Caron, chair of the RSU’s ad hoc Withdrawal Committee. “This is where the hard work starts though, believe it or not.”
If the voters approval the withdrawal, the committees and the RSU’s board, superintendent, and business manager will have to start dividing things up and working on the details like which staff goes where, Caron said.
“I think that’s something we’re going to start discussing,” she said. “We’re all still new, this is our first town.”
