Voters in the western Maine town of Harrison will vote Tuesday on whether to begin the process of withdrawing from their school district in response to a far-off proposal to consolidate local elementary schools.
Residents will decide whether the lakeside town should file a petition to withdraw from South Paris-based School Administrative District 17 and form a committee to weigh the costs of switching districts or becoming a single-town district.
MSAD 17 has been consolidating its schools in a bid to save money, making Harrison the latest Maine town to face the question of whether it can keep its local elementary school as student populations dwindle, costs rise, and an older population is paying more to educate fewer kids.
Last fall, elementary schoolers in Waterford began attending Harrison Elementary School. Elsewhere in the district, West Paris voters elected to shutter their elementary school in a landslide vote last spring. The district had planned to vote in the fall on whether to accept state money to build a consolidated elementary school for students from Harrison, Waterford and Norway, but it currently doesn’t have a location nailed down.
“We’re still very early on in the process,” school board member Veronica Poland said. “We don’t even have a site selected yet for the voters to vote on.”
Harrison will decide whether to take the unusual step of leaving its district in a bid to pre-empt consolidation and preserve its elementary school. Even if Harrison votes “yes” next week, it’s only the start of a lengthy process that the town estimates may cost around $50,000.
The town has a head start at examining its choices. A “School Options Committee” formed in 2024 when a consolidation plan was first weighed by the district. It has been meeting for over a year to discuss the proposal to withdraw and save the local school.
“Closing [Harrison Elementary] would take our kids out of our community [and] into a bigger school,” Amy Gerry, Harrison’s deputy clerk and the chair of the committee, said. “Parents weren’t happy with that.”
In May, the committee presented three basic options: staying the course and risking the closure, joining the smaller Bridgton-based MSAD 61 or going it alone. All three options will remain on the table if voters decide to move forward with the withdrawal process on Tuesday.
If a “no” vote prevails or if the withdrawal is blocked later in the process, Harrison Elementary School may close if a new school is built. It’s not clear whether the district will vote on accepting the new school funds this fall as previously planned.
Gerry said that despite annoyance at the possibility of consolidation among some parents, few have been turning up to meetings of the options committee.
“Our townspeople are mostly retired age, so it’s a small selection of families that are here, and they haven’t come out,” she said. “Obviously on June 9 we’ll see where the vote goes.”
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.