ST. FRANCIS, Maine — A bill to transfer ownership of the local school to this small community in northern Maine is on its way to Gov. Paul LePage after it passed the senate Wednesday.
Under a unique plan, the town would be authorized to lease part of the building back to School Administrative District 27 and use part of the property in a for-profit venture, such as senior housing.
Sponsored by Rep. John Martin, a member of the board of directors for SAD 27, emergency legislation LD 1048 is aimed at preventing SAD 27 from shutting down the tiny St. Francis Elementary School because of declining enrollments and rising education costs.
The bill, which received full support in the House and Senate, will allow the school district to hand over ownership of the building to the town of St. Francis without having to go through the state’s lengthy official school-closing process.
SAD 27 Superintendent Tim Doak will meet with St. Francis residents at the school beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday to discuss future plans for the building, which could include closing the school, should the town reject taking over the building.
“We are going to talk about turning the building over to them,” Doak said Wednesday afternoon. “If [St. Francis] is willing to take the building over at no charge, the SAD 27 board will vote to support that on May 11.”
Doak said he expects St. Francis residents to hold that vote sometime next week.
Should the town reject taking the building over, that will likely spell the end of St. Francis Elementary School with a vote to close it down at the May 11 meeting, Doak said.
“It’s really up to the residents of St. Francis,” he said. “We have worked out a preliminary lease agreement to present to them, and it comes down to what they want to do.”
On Wednesday, Martin said the governor has 10 days to sign the bill into law but expected he would do so by early next week.
“I don’t anticipate there will be a problem with him signing it,” Martin said. “The [Maine] Department of Education supported it, and I have talked to [Gov. Paul LePage’s] staff and they have no problem with it.”
The SAD 27 school board last spring began considering closing the St. Francis school, which serves 32 students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, to save the district an estimated $170,000.
A committee of St. Francis residents has been working ever since to come up with a plan to keep and fund the school in their town.
The proposal that has received the most local support involves converting part of the building into elderly housing apartments with food services and maintenance personnel shared between the school and housing facility.
“A lot of the budget numbers we are looking at [for St. Francis] are fixed around shared costs with another entity in the building,” Doak said. “We realize there will be nothing in there next year. But for [classes] to continue there, we have to be looking at shared costs.”
Closing the rural school, 16 miles west of Fort Kent, would mean one-way bus trips of an hour or more for some of the youngsters — some from as far away as Allagash — to the elementary school in Fort Kent.
“This is a unique and creative way to solve a problem,” Suzan Beaudoin, Maine Department of Education director of school finance and operations, said during her testimony at last month’s public hearing on LD 1048 before the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee. “We [at the department of education] are quite comfortable with this.”
Beaudoin said there are numerous examples of school districts around the state leasing buildings from municipalities, but this would be the first time there would be a separate use within the same building.
Doak has said the district would spend about $40,000 annually to lease the space for the 20 pre-kindergarten to third-grade students in St. Francis.
It is costing the district about $170,000 annually to operate the school, he said.
Martin said it is important the residents of St. Francis have a say in the fate of their school.
“We are working with them,” he said. “I think for the future of the community it is important for them to have that building.”
Doak said a great deal of time by a lot of people has been spent working to save the St. Francis school, but the future of students taking classes in that community ultimately is up to that community’s willingness to take over the building and help fund it.
“It is definitely going to be a transition,” Doak said. “It could be a transition into something really neat, or it could be a transition into no longer having a school. It depends on what the voters there decide to do.”
