Lubec residents will meet twice on the night of Tuesday, December 2, to discuss whether to join a regional school administrative unit, as required by the state school consolidation law, and to consider whether to close Lubec High School and tuition students to another facility. The first meeting is from 6 to 6:45 p.m. and the second meeting is from 7 to 8 p.m. The next week, on Tuesday, December 9, all of the towns in the proposed school Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS), from Machias to Lubec, will vote on whether to join together.

Eleody Libby, a member of the SAD 19 board of directors, says, "In the first meeting, Scott Porter and Bucket Davis will discuss what AOS will mean for the community, the government structure, funding, how the money will be allocated. In the initial breakdown, it does save us some money, but what we could give up by that cost savings is important. Our town will save money, but, going forward, who knows what that will look like? Those are some questions to ask Scott Porter."

Libby observes, "There are a couple schools who will save money and there are a couple schools who will lose money in our particular AOS. With the law today, [if Lubec votes down joining the AOS], we would lose $42,000, but that may go down, when the legislature goes into session. Who knows what will happen down the road, with state budget cuts. Clearly a lot of communities voted this down. In some communities, it is going to work, while in other communities, it will not work."

She believes, "According to this year's figures, it would save money, but going forward, creating a super administrative central office will cost a lot of money, as time goes by. I think there are other ways to cost share, more creative ways than this. If even one community in our [proposed] system votes it down, then we all go back to the drawing board."

Scott Porter, superintendent of Union 102 in Machias, explains, "This AOS we are doing is somewhat like a school union, in that each school community will have their school committees in place or school board in place. Machias employees will still be Machias employees, Lubec employees will still be Lubec employees, they will not be the employees of this new unit. This new unit we are doing, simply this new board put in place, will be just to govern the central office, much like a joint school union."

Porter explains the cost-sharing in the proposed new unit, stating, "The primary difference, which has caused most of the towns not to embrace it, is that all of the state's subsidy will come to that new AOS unit in one subsidy check. We have to have a subsidy sharing formula in our agreement to split that up, and that is where it gets very difficult. Everyone is trying to get the amount of subsidy they would have had on their own. That just cannot be done. We have had the best financial experts, and they came to the same conclusion I did: there is no way we could recreate what the Department of Education did in those four-page print-outs. To do those four-page print-outs we get per town, which details the exact amount of subsidy per town, it takes the Department of Education about 50 pages to generate those four pages we get. There is a lot that happens, as far as the calculations from the Department of Education; they use data we do not even have to do that. There is no way to recreate it."

The December 2 meeting in Lubec will be a public hearing, and all of the towns in the proposed AOS are required by law to have a public hearing prior to the vote on December 9. All 12 towns will vote on that date. Porter comments, "Some towns have taken a strong stand and even recommended, at the selectmen level and the school board level, a no vote, and some haven't done that. The challenging part is that if we fall below 1,000 students, the commissioner can not approve the plan, and that particular plan will not go forward."

Porter points out that the regional school unit will only have around 1,150 students. If one of the larger towns fails to approve the plan, the entire plan could fail.

Concerning the December 2 hearing, Porter says, "The meeting will basically be an overview of what will be in the plan. People need to be clear on the fact that everyone keeps their own school communities. Since Lubec is an SAD, they are referred to as a school board, and they would still have that school board in place. The only thing sharing would be central office services, which include superintendent and special education administration. If people vote it down, there is a penalty associated with it."

Proposal to close high school

Following the hearing a second meeting will be held by the committee that has been studying a proposal to close the high school. Libby says, "There will be handouts, a PowerPoint presentation and a question-and-answer period."

The school board, after requests at public budget meetings, set up a committee to review the advantages and disadvantages to the town of closing the high school. One member of the committee, former school board member Diana Wilson, paid for a ballot to be taken during the presidential election on November 4. By an overwhelming majority, voters opted to close the school.

Libby says, "In discussing the vote on election day and the comments, there are some people who are not aware of the facts, and this meeting will present the facts." The meeting is informational only, and no vote will be taken regarding the fate of the school on December 2.