Staff Writer
HODGDON — “We have a lot of work to do,” Mary Jane McCalmon told the crowd of committee members gathered at the elementary school gym Monday night. McCalmon, a Portland-based consultant with the Department of Education, is helping multiple school units around the state set up the newly-mandated regional school unit (RSU). She was at Hodgdon Monday night for the second meeting of the local Regionalization Planning Committee.
Describing the committee’s job as “a lot of work” seems almost like an understatement. Over the course the two months, members must sort out the details of a new super-sized school district — Regional School Unit 4 — establishing a governing body for the new unit, making decisions about assets and liability disposition, settling labor contracts and managing the minutia of the new district’s financial future. The state’s first deadline to settle these details — a not-so-distant December 15.
At the opening of this week’s meeting, area superintendents reported on the status of their letters of intent.
The letters of intent, filed by Aug. 31, included what directions each district was exploring for regionalization. Districts could submit more than one letter of intent to the Department of Education, but in almost all local cases only one plan was approved — a plan for RSU 4, a district which includes SAD 70, SAD 29, SAD 25, SAD 14 and CSD 9, as well as, the towns of Hersey, Moro, Bancroft and Orient.
The Regional Planning Committee, made up of representatives from the public, member towns and area school boards, started work Monday dividing up into sub-committees and choosing chairs of each sub-committee.
The governance sub-committee, which helps establish a new school board, convened. Greg Ryan from CSD 9 in Dyer Brook was chosen as the chair. A sub-committee on assets and liabilities will look at what’s owed and owned by the various districts and how that may come together in the new unit; chair of this committee is Myron Baldwin from SAD 25 in Stacyville. The third sub-committee, personnel, will look at labor contracts and collective bargaining; Mark Bossie from SAD 29 is chairman. Finance, a sub-committee that will look at the cost-savings and form a financial transition plan, will be headed by Greg Sherman from the SAD 70 area.
A schedule of upcoming meetings was set; most of the meetings are expected to be spent in sub-committee. The full committee will meet Thursday, Oct. 4 at East Grand School in Danforth at 6:30 p.m. Other dates on the schedule are: Monday, Oct. 15 at Katahdin Elementary School in Stacyville; Monday, Oct. 29 at Southern Aroostook Community School in Dyer Brook and Thursday, Nov. 15 at Houlton Southside School.
