By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

Parents and students may have to wait months to find out what will happen to the area’s three Catholic elementary schools.

The Rev. Richard Malone, bishop of Portland, has received his task force’s merger recommendations but has decided not to release them to the public. Instead, the task force will present its report and explain the reasoning behind it to Malone and to the Catholic School Board on March 28. The meeting will not be open to the public.

Malone will then decide what will be done with the schools. He could follow all or some of the task force’s recommendations, or ignore them completely. He plans to announce his decision before the end of the school year, a spokeswoman said.

The pastors of St. Joseph’s, Holy Cross and Saints Peter and Paul parishes announced the school merger in January. Facing rising costs and declining enrollment and infant baptism, the pastors said consolidation is necessary to strengthen Catholic education in the area.

A task force was appointed to examine the possibilities and make a detailed recommendation to Malone. It ultimately considered three plans: One would consolidate schools, keeping a single elementary school under the parishes’ control and giving control of a middle school to St. Dominic Regional High School.

The second would create one elementary school and one middle school, but both would remain under the parishes’ control. The third would create a single pre-K-8 school, run by the parishes.

None of the three could be fully implemented by next fall.

It is unknown which, if any, plan the task force recommended.

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