FORT KENT, Maine — In what would be a first in Maine, local officials are looking to deal with declining enrollments and rising education costs by combining elementary classes and elderly assisted living under one roof.
The innovative move could prevent School Administrative District 27 from needing to shut down the St. Francis Elementary School.
As presented to the public during a school board meeting Monday night at Fort Kent Community High School, the proposal would have the school district hand over ownership of the building to the town of St. Francis in exchange for part of the structure to be used to educate pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students from the St. Francis and Allagash area.
The town then would convert the remaining portion of the building into assisted living space for elderly residents of the area.
“The more we talked about it, the more it looked like a win-win for everyone,” SAD 27 Superintendent Tim Doak said Monday night. “It would help keep elderly residents in the community, it keeps the kids at school and it could provide jobs.”
While other towns in Maine have converted former school buildings into community space, Doak said this is the first time he is aware of a town trying to combine the two.
A lot of details still need to be worked out, including having legislation passed to allow the plan to move forward without the district first needing to go through a complex and lengthy school closure process, but local officials and residents favored any plan that might save the school.
“I don’t want to see a small school where students get great attention just disappear,” resident and parent James Delancy said at the meeting.
“These things take time,” another resident said in support of the idea of the assisted living plan in the school building. “They should be given the time (because) it might work.”
Board chairman Barry Ouellette said he supported the idea and praised those working on finding a viable solution for the future of the school.
SAD 27 board member and newly re-elected Rep. John Martin told the board he has introduced legislation to pave the way for the town of St. Francis to take over the school building without the board first voting to close the school.
“The law clearly does not envision that kind of set-up,” Martin said Tuesday morning. “Clearly there has to be some changes in the law.”
Martin’s legislation does not yet have any language attached to it, beyond calling for “an act to assist the municipality of St. Francis,” he said Tuesday.
But Martin said his bill would be structured in such a way to avoid going through “the expansive process of withdrawing or closing with the Department of Education.”
“At the same time,” he continued, “there is currently nothing in the law that gives [St. Francis] the ability to do what they want to do: generate income from elderly housing [and] put them in the position to apply for grants.”
Changing the law, Martin said, is the easiest and quickest way to address the future of a school in St. Francis.
The school board last spring began considering closing the school, which currently serves 32 students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, to save the district an estimated $170,000.
But closing the rural school, located 16-miles west of Fort Kent, would mean one-way bus trips of an hour or more for some of the youngsters to the elementary school in Fort Kent.
Those long rides, combined with a fear of losing a central part of their community, prompted a group of concerned St. Francis residents to ask the school board last summer for time to come up with alternatives to closing the school.
In August, the board agreed to give the group six months to come up with a viable plan to keep the school open at a savings to the district.
Since then, the group has met weekly to discuss options that ranged from renting unused space in the building to the town to opening a truck-driving school on the premises, according to Doak.
“This group turned over every stone,” Doak said Monday night. Ultimately, the residents came up with the idea of separating a portion of the school building from students and converting it into assisted living space for elderly residents.
Martin said Tuesday there remains a great deal to discuss with regards to the future of the school in St. Francis, including determining the relationship between the town and SAD 27, how much the town would pay to educate its students there and how many grades would remain at the school.
“There are a lot of things to figure out,” he said. “It’s going to take some work to get this done right.”
In the meantime, SAD 27 Board of Directors decided Monday night to hold off taking a scheduled vote on whether to close the St. Francis Elementary School. They expect an update on the proposal during their next meeting in February.
Samantha Warren, director of communication for the Maine Department of Education, said in an email Tuesday that the department had been contacted last spring by SAD 27 officials seeking information about the process for closing the St. Francis school.
“But we have not been contacted since,” she said. She was not aware of Martin’s pending legislation.
On Tuesday, Doak said he had spoken to the district’s legal counsel, who indicated that Martin’s plan appeared viable.
“The school budget is not looking good,” Doak said. “There is a possibility state revenue sharing will decrease and costs are going up.”
The district also is facing the loss of roughly $160,000 in local revenue after residents of Winterville voted 78-2 on Monday to officially withdraw from the district and tuition its 22 students to SAD 27.
Dwindling enrollment districtwide is also impacting the budget, Doak said, and it’s time for some creative thinking.
“I do think this idea for St. Francis can work,” he said. “We just need to move carefully, [and] this could be a model for the rest of the state.”
