The Regional School Unit/Maine School Administrative District 40 Board of Directors has decided to return to the table with the Many Flags/One Community project, at the end of a three-and-three-quarter-hour meeting, April 11.
On Nov. 2, 2012 the board rejected a proposal from the board of directors of the Many Flags project to allow RSU 40 to have two non-voting representatives on the Many Flags board.
At the April 11 meeting, board member Ann Donaldson, of Union, made a motion to rescind the Nov. 2 decision, which she had previously supported.
“We have been talking about this a long time,” Donaldson said. “People who want to be involved keep telling me we have no financial obligation until we sign on the bottom line.”
She said it was important for RSU/MSAD 40 to maintain contact with a project that could help students.
Darryl Goldrup, of Waldoboro, objected to the motion. He said the district’s desire to have a voice in the process might be misused for political purposes.
Donaldson’s motion passed by the two-thirds majority required to rescind a previous decision. She then made a motion for RSU/MSAD 40 to rejoin the process as voting members.
Lynda Letteney, of Waldoboro, is RSU/MSAD 40’s board representative to the Region 8 Board of Directors that oversees the Mid-Coast School of Technology and is Region 8’s representative to the Many Flags board.
Letteney said the Many Flags program, which may be in place as early as the fall of 2014, will position students to graduate from Medomak Valley High School with one year of college credit under their belts, as well as automatic admission to the University of Maine System.
Such a program would greatly reduce the cost of tuition for that first year of college, she said.
The proposal for a single campus comprising a 700- to 750-student regional high school, a community college, the MCST, and other vocational training began with discussions between MCST and the two former school districts that now comprise RSU 13. In 2010 the Many Flags steering committee invited the Five Town Consolidated School District to join discussions about the project.
That same year, following a request for a letter in support of Many Flags, the board of what was then MSAD 40 stated that they did not support the project because it was not in the best interest of their students. While expressing interest in regional and collaborative educational models, RSU 40 board members have repeatedly asserted that they do not want to support a new administrative layer or the building of a new campus.
After a lengthy discussion last fall, in which board members expressed concern about the potential for the Many Flags board to use any RSU 40 involvement as an indication of support, two votes were taken on the proposal.
The first vote, to not send any representatives to the Many Flags meeting, failed. A second question, framed in positive language, asked if the RSU 40 board wanted to elect two non-voting members to the Many Flags board. That motion was defeated as well.
The April 11 vote to rejoin the Many Flags process passed by a weighted vote of 533 to 412.
