FORT KENT, Maine — There’s a lot of uncertainty in SAD 27 these days.
The district remains without a budget after voters three times failed to approve one at referendum; the superintendent resigned in August and the newly appointed administrator does not come on board until next month; and two of the six member towns have started a formal withdrawal process.
For now, the district is operating month to month with the $12.1 million budget approved by voters at the last district budget meeting held in August.
“I really don’t know if this is the end of the district,” Lucie Tabor, SAD 27 director of finance, said Wednesday morning. “Obviously we like the status quo and don’t want to seperate the district, but it’s really a guessing game at this point.”
Eagle Lake residents voted earlier this month to begin the withdrawal process after residents became fed up with a district funding formula they say places an unfair burden on them.
Then on Tuesday, with just under 18 percent of Wallagrass’ 391 registered voters casting ballots, residents voted 49-20 to start the withdrawal process, according to the town clerk.
“We were really forced to go this avenue,” Eagle Lake Town Manager Sandra Fournier said Tuesday. “We tried to have the [SAD 27 board of directors] look at a different formula for our municipal contribution and that did not happen.”
Under the most recently defeated SAD 27 proposed $12.1 million 2015-2016 budget, the local cost totals $4.6 million for the six member communities of Fort Kent, St. Francis, St. John Plantation, New Canada, Wallagrass and Eagle Lake.
Eagle Lake’s local assessment is $863,000, a figure Fournier said is arrived at based on the town’s high waterfront property tax valuation.
“Being a lakeside community, our values are higher than other towns in the district,” Fournier said. “And we have a small student population.”
There are currently 95 prekindergarten through grade 12 students in Eagle Lake, according to SAD 27 enrollment figures.
Thirty-six students attend prekindergarten through grade five at the Eagle Lake Elementary School and the remaining 59 travel to the middle and high school in Fort Kent.
Districtwide, enrollment is 925 students.
The town has informed the Maine Department of Education of the successful withdrawal vote and is now waiting to hear back from the department so officials can begin the next step of appointing a committee to examine education options.
“That withdrawal committee will look at multiple options,” Fournier said. “Any decisions will be based on what is the best financial avenue to take [and] one option is certainly trying to get our school so the town becomes the owner and we are able to run it ourselves.”
Several miles to the north in the community of Wallagrass, Town Manager James Gagnon said of Tuesday’s vote, “We pay a lot. We want to look at our options for education and … establish a committee to explore different avenues.”
The community pays $409,000 as its local share of the SAD 27 budget.
Wallagrass has an SAD 27 enrollment of 80 students, with 49 at the Wallagrass Elementary School and 31 attending the middle and high schools in Fort Kent.
“There have always been threats to close down [Wallagrass Elementary School] and people are kind of fed up with that,” Gagnon said.
Tabor said the next step for both towns is to work with the state and district to determine actual costs and savings associated with leaving the district, including the disposition of assets such as buildings and debt.
“There are no bad feelings,” she said. “Each town has to make their own informed decisions, but once that momentum [for withdrawal] has started, it’s hard to stop.”
In 2014, Winterville pulled out of SAD 27, taking more than $90,000 in local funds with it and leaving the remaining member towns to come up with the difference.
Winterville’s students now are tuitioned to SAD 27 schools.
Meanwhile, as SAD 27 students and staff are on the annual harvest recess, Tabor and her staff are formulating a fourth proposed budget and await the arrival of the new superintendent.
Earlier this month the board appointed Madawaska High School principal Benjamin Sirois to the position and Tabor said he comes on board Oct. 19.
“We are starting to look at what we can do with the budget,” Tabor said. “We don’t have a clear picture of that now [and] hope to have our next board meeting on it October 5 or 6 with a budget hearing by the end of October and the referendum on the November Election Day.”
