EDDINGTON, Maine — Residents in RSU 63 will decide on Nov. 3 whether to separate from a partnership with four Airline communities and again become stand-alone school units, undoing consolidation put in place five years ago.
The RSU 63 board voted in September to send the decision to voters by referendum on Nov. 3 after months of discussions, and it held a public hearing Monday to help educate residents about the vote.
RSU 63 includes Holden, Eddington and Clifton, and Community School District 8’s member towns are Amherst, Aurora, Great Pond and Osborn. All are located on or around Route 9, which is nicknamed the Airline.
RSU 63 and CSD 8 joined in 2010 to create a prekindergarten through eighth-grade alternative organizational structure, known as AOS 81, after a second year of penalties for RSU 63, which totaled $370,000, for not consolidating under the terms of the state’s school consolidation law of 2007.
“We have this extra layer of meetings, two budgets,” school board member Jen Newcomb said of what she characterized as administrative waste created by the consolidated boards.
The decision was made to “appease the state,” Newcomb said later.
Since RSU 63 has the majority vote on the AOS 81 board and pays 93 percent of the AOS 81 bills, the system is not balanced, Newcomb said, explaining another reason why the vote is before residents.
Rusty Gagnon, deputy chairwoman of the RSU 63 board and chairwoman of the AOS 81 board, said the two school departments are very different.
“The Airline has a total of 34 students, with 17 tuitioned at the high school, and we have 852 students, with 257 tuitioned at the high school,” Gagnon said of RSU 63.
“The issues on 63’s plate are not necessarily the issues on the Airline’s plate,” she said later.
State officials originally suggested in 2007 that SAD 63 and CSD 8 join with Brewer, Dedham and Orrington to create RSU 15. Voters in all 10 communities resoundingly rejected the proposed RSU 15 during a January 2009 referendum. Brewer later was granted standalone status, Orrington and Dedham partnered, and RSU 63 and CSD 8 joined forces.
Benefits of going back to how things ran before consolidation include reducing meetings, eliminating the cost of an AOS 81 audit and the expense of having 10 town clerks at the annual budget meeting, the school officials said.
“We can withdraw without the penalties we faced before,” Newcomb said.
The superintendent of schools, director of transportation and facilities, special services director, business manager and three support positions fall under AOS 81, with the services and costs split proportionately between RSU 63 and CSD 8.
Some residents expressed concern about the budgets, and how things would work, if the decision to split was made.
If the referendum passes, the seven positions will revert to RSU 63, as they were before consolidation, and, as before, CSD 8 will be able to contract with RSU 63 for the services, Newcomb said.
“We had always worked with the Airline,” Newcomb said. “We had always shared services. It’s kind of going back to where we were before.”
If voters approve the separation, the change would go into effect on July 1, 2016.