The decision by the RSU 20 board in the Belfast-Searsport area to close the Frankfort Elementary School represents the very best and very worst of recently consolidated school units. Faced with a $1.8 million revenue shortfall, the board was forced to find savings. The Frankfort school, serving fewer than 100 students in kindergarten through grade five, was a logical target.
The worst comes in seeing parents torn up over a move that leaves them without a school in their town. Parents, who could take comfort in knowing their son or daughter was just a few miles from home, in a school whose staff they knew and trusted, are now anxious over the future. This sentiment is not to be dismissed, and the superintendent and board members did not take this bold step lightly.
But the best of the move comes in that as a consolidated district, the superintendent and board have options that did not exist when the six-community Belfast-area district and the three-community Searsport-area district were separate. The students who attended the Frankfort school will be distributed to one of three nearby elementary schools in Stockton Springs, Searsport and Swanville. Before the districts merged, only two of those options would have been available. And that third option, in Swanville, is closer to the Frankfort school than the other two schools are.
Sadly, the Frankfort school was targeted in part because no money was owed on it. It was renovated and expanded — a gymnasium and library were added — in the late 1980s. Schools built in the 1960s to accommodate the baby boom generation had begun to fall apart in those years, and enrollment projections were showing steady growth. In retrospect, the state money used to renovate and expand small schools such as Frankfort Elementary was not well spent.
Schools that have been denigrated as overly large regional elementary schools would have been a better investment. The newer elementary schools that draw from larger areas are still smaller than those in other states.
Under the process, Frankfort residents will vote on closing the school. If they choose to keep it open, they will be assessed the estimated savings the RSU would have realized had it been closed — about $370,000 annually. The savings relate to maintenance, heating and lighting costs, as well as needed upgrades. If the school is closed and the RSU has no educational use for it, the town can vote to accept ownership. Unfortunately, since the building is not located near the village center, its use as a public center of some sort is limited.
These are not easy decisions for those charged with running the regional school unit, and they are not happy outcomes for parents. But decisions such as these must, and will be made.