RUMFORD – The SAD 43 board hopes to have a facilitator to help with its tentative plans for consolidation at its next meeting on Oct. 1 to meet with the school committee.

Then, that same person will meet with the boards of SADs 21, 44 and Union 37. If all four agree that they can work with the facilitator, then he will be hired and efforts will begin to establish a regional planning committee.

Superintendent Jim Hodgkin updated the board Monday night on progress to adhere to the state’s mandate of administrative consolidation of school districts.

“We won’t have a complete plan by Dec. 1,” he said.

That is the deadline the state has set for submission of a more detailed plan; however, the local districts have been told that a partial plan will suffice for now.

Department of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron expects to introduce legislation that could help many districts in the state that would be penalized with higher school taxes as a result of mandated consolidation, said Hodgkin.

Such legislation would help the River Valley districts because as it stands, although SAD 43 and SAD 44 often work with SAD 21, any district that merges with the Dixfield district would be penalized because the SAD 21 towns have lower tax bases than those of SAD 43 or SAD 44.

A drop in enrollment at SAD 43 also appears to require joining with more than one neighboring district to meet the 2,500 minimum student population.

Hodgkin said enrollment figures dropped to 1,486, down 90 students from last year. SAD 21 has just under 1,000, and SAD 44, about 800, so a combination of just two of the districts would not meet the state mandate of 2,500 students.

If enrollment trends continue, Hodgkin said, Mountain Valley High School’s just under 600 student enrollment could drop to about 400 in four years. As the new school year begins, the high school classes have the largest numbers of students, with a total of 577. The class sizes for other grade levels generally decrease from grade 8 and below, except for grade 3 and kindergarten.

Hodgkin also said he has begun running figures on what it could cost his district to remain alone. Although he does not have final figures, he said the penalty could come in somewhere between $500,000 and $2 million.

New figures provided by Union 37, based in Rangeley, also show that a SAD 43 merger with that school union would be as costly as one with SAD 21, said Hodgkin.