OXFORD – SAD 17 directors were skeptical Monday of recommendations that would create smaller learning communities within the 1,200-student Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School.

The proposals come after a year of study by a Small Learning Communities Committee, funded by a $20,000 federal school restructuring grant that was recently re-funded for $25,000.

Directors said they were concerned that the phased-in creation of four teams of students and teachers, autonomously operating within the school, would limit scheduling opportunities and create extra layers of administration. They also were upset that the board hadn’t been brought into the discussion earlier.

Advocates, including Matt Robinson, the chairman of the Small Learning Communities Committee, said changes must be made to raise aspirations of students. He said studies have shown smaller learning communities, where teachers “loop” with students from one year to the next, can work well at OHCHS, one of 13 high schools in Maine with more than 1,000 students.

“It’s an enormous project, which is really suggesting fundamental changes in the structure of our high school,” said director Tim Ingram. “It would be nice for us to be updated.”

Director Don Gouin, while complimenting Robinson for his work, was more direct.

“We need to be more involved,” Gouin said.

Superintendent Mark Eastman said the committee’s next step is to meet with the district’s curriculum committee on the eight-page report presented by Robinson, a social studies teacher at the high school.

When the tech school and high school merged in an expanded high school in 1998, the vision was to create an environment where students could “seamlessly participate in all programs,” high school Principal Joe Moore said. Six “theme-based” schools were created around subject areas, but administrators found that this led to gender inequalities and de facto academic tracking.

“We’re not alone in this,” Moore said. Small Learning Community planning efforts are ongoing at four other Maine high schools, including Sanford, he said.

Referring to the former West Paris High School that closed, West Paris director Dale Piirainen said it seems that “a lot of what the research shows is what we used to call common sense.”

In other words, there’s value to having schools be kept small and autonomous. Robinson agreed, saying the hope for students is that “the connection they felt when they were in those small high schools will be resurrected.”

For a school to operate autonomously, “it has to have its own scheduling,” Robinson said. Which isn’t to say that a student couldn’t reach outside to other areas of the school if their interests or needs warranted doing so.

“It’s all about meeting the individual needs of the students,” Moore said. “We’ll always individualize classes for our students.”

Athletics and other extracurricular activities would not be separated, but would be scheduled as much as possible so they could be shared among the four teams in the school, according to the recommendations.

All four teams would, of course, have to meet the standards of Maine’s Learning Results, Robinson said. Every effort would be made to avoid tracking, or separating students based on academic achievement.

“We are never going to be comfortable with that high school until we’re maximizing the potential of all the kids in it. We need to raise the bar,” Eastman said.