MINOT – Selectmen Monday night questioned what effect school consolidation plans will have on who owns the Minot Consolidated School, whether the town will continue to collect development impact fees for future school improvements and what will happen to the town’s contract to send its high school students to Poland.

“School unions are out and SADs are in,” School Committee Chairwoman Lisa Sabatine told selectmen.

Right now, Minot is part of Union 29 and in unions, the individual towns own and are totally responsible for their own school facilities.

In SADs, facilities are owned by the district, which is also responsible for their upkeep.

Selectmen noted that the town has anticipated growth at the Minot Consolidated School and set up a development-impact fee program to fund an addition to the school should development so demand.

“What happens to the impact fee moneys Minot has already collected?” asked Selectman Dean Campbell.

The amount of money in escrow is not insubstantial. According to Treasurer Connie Taker, the town has collected $148,000 in impact fees earmarked for the school since the program began in May 2003.

Further, the July 2008 deadline for school consolidation has, Sabatine observed, created a free-for-all as districts scramble for partners with students sufficient to meet the state Department of Education’s plans that districts have at least 2,500 students.

Locally, Sabatine said, Raymond is talking with Windham, Turner with Livermore, Buckfield-Sumner with Oxford Hills. And so, Sabatine noted, when Union 29 school officials were approached by Gray-New Gloucester for possible consolidation talks, the question of Minot’s contract to send its high school students to Poland surfaced.

Sabatine noted that when the Poland school opened in 1999, it was with agreements authorized by a special act of the state Legislature that Minot and Mechanic Falls send their high school students there for 20 years. The agreements also protected Poland, guaranteeing that town a source of tuition students to keep its school full.

Campbell wondered what the effect might be of bringing a second high school into the mix, such as Gray-New Gloucester or any nearby district.

At latest count, Union 29 has 1,705 students and Gray-New Gloucester – SAD 15 – lists 1,966 students. Joined, the two districts would meet the department’s 2,500-student population goal.