East Millinocket and Medway school leaders will probably begin negotiating a new tuition agreement to continue sharing students within the next two weeks, Great Northern AOS Superintendent Quenten Clark said Wednesday.
East Millinocket residents voted during their town meeting on Tuesday to approve the negotiations, which are crucial to allowing Medway students to continue to attend Opal Myrick Elementary School and Schenck High School in East Millinocket and East Millinocket students to attend Medway Middle School, Clark said.
It would be a closed contract, meaning that each town’s students would have to attend those schools, Clark said, and it would go into effect July 1. Medway’s residents are expected to vote on whether to approve negotiations for an agreement at their town meeting on June 13, he said.
The tuition agreement presently calls for $8,500 per high school student and $7,500 per each elementary and middle school student charged to each town, Clark said.
Talk that Medway officials were going to open negotiations with other towns such as Millinocket or school systems such as RSU 67, which has Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln, is unfounded, said Clark and Greg Stanley, the AOS and Medway’s school committee chairman.
“Nobody is talking about taking kids out of East [Millinocket],” said Clark, whose AOS serves East Millinocket, Medway and Woodville.
Nor are Medway officials in talks with other towns to send their town’s students elsewhere, Stanley said.
The idea that Medway students might be going elsewhere arose from the recent discovery that language keeping the closed agreement closed had gone missing from the contract about five years ago, Clark said.
“Nobody can fathom why this would change five years ago,” said Clark, who speculated that the omission occurred with a typing error.
Clark, who has warned that East Millinocket faces an eventual reckoning over the future of Schenck due to escalating costs and declining enrollments, advised parents concerned about keeping Schenk going to “relax a bit and see what comes out of this.”
The talks might necessitate additional town meetings before they conclude, he said.
The board can only negotiate a closed contract with Medway. Problem is there are 2 contracts between the towns one for K–8 then the high school contract. Mr Clark said lots of towns don’t have contracts at all. Does that mean we are going to be locked into an agreement for K-8 and they get choice for high school?
Then you have the problems with the education that is provided at Medway Middle School. They should worry about that and put money into education instead of their building. Their test scores are in the toilet, they have a 3 rating at Greatschools.com based on last years scores and with the great rush to send a large percentage of kids to summer school it makes one wonder where the most recent scores placed them.
East residents should have choice for middle school considering Medway is
a SIPS school for math and on monitor status for reading….and they are cutting
teaching positions at a time like this when they can’t afford to lose
them due to poor test scores. Our children deserve a better education then they are getting there.
I know someone that is moving because they do not want their kids in elementary going to the High school