BELFAST, Maine — Regional School District 20 is a complicated place.
The district, created after the state passed the school consolidation law in 2008, encompasses eight communities stretching over 194 square miles, 12 schools and 17 school board members. Its $35.6 million budget is the largest expense for each of its member towns, and, to strapped property taxpayers seeking withdrawal, the costs seem to be rising without an end in sight.
In November, voters from six of the eight towns will decide if they have had enough of RSU 20, when they vote on Election Day whether to withdraw from the district. Voters from five of those towns — Belfast, Belmont, Morrill, Searsmont and Swanville — also will decide if they wish to form a new RSU composed of those towns. Voters from Northport will have a different choice — whether or not to contract with School Union 69, which includes Appleton, Hope and Lincolnville.
The final two communities in RSU 20, Searsport and Stockton Springs, also are currently in the process of withdrawing from the district but officials there are waiting to see what happens with the other member towns on Election Day before taking further steps.
Those in favor of withdrawing from the district say the so-called “forced marriage” of the former SAD 34 and SAD 56 is no longer working — neither financially nor practically — and it is time for a fresh start.
“If you like the current structure, the current board and the current financial outlook, vote ‘No,’ on withdrawal,” Eric Sanders, a longtime advocate of withdrawal and the chairman of the Belfast withdrawal committee, said Friday. “If you think we can do better with a smaller district, vote ‘Yes.’ It’s not about money any more. It’s about the situation.”
If voters from Belfast, Belmont, Morrill, Searsmont and Swanville are in favor of leaving RSU 20 and forming a new district together, for the first year it will largely look the same for students and schools, according to Belfast City Attorney Kristin Collins. One important exception is the board of directors, which would have just nine people, with — according to a state formula — five coming from Belfast, because it has a larger population. The four smaller towns would each have one director.
“The reorganization group felt that the smaller the board, the better,” she said.
Collins believes the smaller board would be able to get more accomplished, especially since the five former SAD 34 towns looking to form a new RSU have a history of working together.
Some who don’t favor withdrawal fear that Belfast would have too much control of the smaller board. But, Collins said, the current RSU 20 directors from Belfast are rarely in agreement and would be unlikely to vote in a bloc on a new board.
She said that some in favor of withdrawal look at it as an economic development imperative. School enrollment has dropped from 2,618 in 2009 to 2,259 this year, in part because Frankfort already has withdrawn from the district and taken its students north to RSU 22.
But another reason for the drop in enrollment might be what Tony Swebelius, RSU 20 board member from Morrill, termed the district’s post-consolidation turmoil.
“Families have been choosing not to move to this district because of the turmoil and uncertainty about the future,” he wrote in a recent guest column in the Belfast Republican Journal. “Additionally, as the district has made cuts to programs and staff, families that felt that their students’ educational needs weren’t being met have pulled their students out of our schools and sent them elsewhere.”
Not everyone supports the effort to withdraw, of course. One reason why is that no one is saying anymore that leaving will save the towns money. In fact, a fiscal analysis released in September by a Portland-based firm shows that if Northport votes to leave the district, costs will go up for the remaining seven towns, no matter what else happens.
Joyce Scott of Morrill, who has immersed herself this year in the withdrawal meetings, does not believe that it would benefit anybody.
“Withdrawal can make no promise or provide any facts that it is a solution,” she said.
Some of her concerns include her belief that withdrawing would leave Searsport and Stockton Springs in a terrible financial bind, that transition costs would be high and that Belfast would have too much power in the reconfigured district. She also said that withdrawing does not do anything to manage the current problems of the towns being overburdened with infrastructure and too many teachers.
“I don’t see it as a solution,” she said Friday. “I see it as paying more money for the problem to continue. We’re just taking it with us.”
Collins said that those in favor or opposed to withdrawal are invited to come to a public hearing on the matter at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21, at Belfast City Hall.
“The meetings are informational,” she said. “I bet at this point people are pretty well decided on what they want to do.”