Ten town and city school boards belonging to school unions 104 and 106 and MSAD 19 voted in favor of partnering to form an alternative organizational structure (AOS) at a meeting held in Eastport on April 8. The school boards present voted unanimously in favor of the partnership. They are Alexander, Baring, Calais, Charlotte, Crawford, Dennysville, Eastport, Lubec, Perry and Robbinston. One more town, Pembroke, did not have a school board quorum at the meeting but voted on April 13 at a special meeting to join the AOS partnership, bringing the total of partner communities to 11.

Currently MSAD 19 has 133 students, Union 106 has 682 students and Union 104 has 513. If all of the partners stay with the AOS, the total student body would be 1,195 for the AOS district.

Terry Lux, superintendent of Union 104, and Jim Underwood, superintendent of Union 106, facilitated the meeting. "My purpose is to provide every piece of information to move forward," Underwood told the school boards and audience of over 50 interested town members. Lux reassured the boards, "The AOS structure is quite different from the previous C the new law makes it doable and hardly changes anything we do right now."

The amended LD 570, An Act To Improve the Laws Governing the Consolidation of School Administrative Units, was signed into emergency law by the governor on April 1. Lux pointed out that the law "gives each town individual subsidy sheets. You do not take on the burden of any other town." She noted that the AOS would have one central office and one superintendent. Underwood elaborated that the central office would house the superintendent and administrative support, and the directors of transportation, curriculum and special education C all positions required by the law. The AOS board would have jurisdiction over the central office but not of the schools themselves. Those duties would still belong to individual school boards, Underwood said. "Any budget line item that falls under administrative services would now be in the central office, so there are potentially reduced costs," Lux added. "This is about saving money." Underwood recommended that a "transitional year" be written into the AOS plan for the formation of the central office and staff.

The AOS partners are under a deadline of June 30 to complete a fast-paced timeline of actions. By the week of April 12 each school board was to have selected three members for the regional planning committee (RPC). "They will determine how the AOS board is chosen," Underwood explained. He also noted that there are existing AOS plans that have been approved by the commissioner of education that the RPC may modify for their own use, thus greatly expediting the process.

Underwood listed the dates by which actions needed to be completed. By April 12 or 13 letters of intent need to be submitted; by April 15 the RPC needs to have developed an AOS plan; by April 21 the school boards need to have held one-item-agenda special meetings to approve the plan; by April 27 the plan needs to have been submitted to the commissioner of education; by May 6 the commissioner needs to have approved the plan with minor revisions; public meetings need to be held between June 14 and June 17; and the referendum votes by each town or city need to be held by June 25. The timeline is in place in order for the partner communities to avoid the penalties for not belonging to an AOS. The combined penalties for unions 104 and 106 and MSAD 19 would be about $280,234.

Notice of intent accepted

Members of the regional planning committee, which included three members of each community -- Calais, Alexander, Baring, Crawford, Robbinston, Charlotte, Dennysville, Eastport, Pembroke and Perry -- met on April 13, 14 and 15 to go over details of the organizational template to meet the state deadline.

On April 14, Susan Gendron stepped down from her position as commissioner of education to accept a position as policy director for a 35-state consortium. One of the last duties she performed before making the announcement was to accept the notice of intent from these area school departments. The three unions are also one of the last hold-outs in the state to comply with the required reorganizational law. Gendron said in an April 14 letter sent to Lux that "members of my staff have reviewed the intended action as described in your notice of intent and have determined that it does comply with the requirements of the reorganization law."

Lux, Underwood and SAD 19 Superintendent Brian Carpenter scrambled on that day to compile all the information hashed over by the RPC over the three marathon meeting nights to submit to the state before the deadline. RPC members used the templates and reorganizational plans from the Machias Bay Area School System, the Mid-County School System and the Fayette School Department to form their own plan.

On the first night the groups elected Steve Knowles of Alexander as chairman and Herbie Clark of Charlotte as vice chairman of the RPC. While the team worked on the basic plan for submission, the title Sunrise County School System or SCSS was selected out of four titles as the new name for the combined unions.