JAY – Ellen Levesque has never circulated a petition before but she will start Wednesday after she registers one at the town office to repeal the state’s new school consolidation law.

Levesque, a member of the Jay Budget Committee, has four petitions and plans to get signatures from Jay and Livermore Falls residents on separate petitions to help the statewide grassroots effort to repeal the law enacted earlier this year.

The state is requiring many school systems to consolidate with neighboring systems in an attempt to save $36 million in the state budget. A plan for new regional school units is due to the state by Dec. 1.

Levesque saw a story in a local paper and contacted Alan Morse of Phillips, who has been setting up on Broadway in Farmington to collect signatures.

She made arrangements to get some petitions herself, though initially she only wanted to sign one, and expected petitioners to be at the polls in Jay on Election Day but no one with that specific petition was there, she said.

Other residents she talked to were also interested in signing the petition.

Petitioners are hoping they’ll get a lot more than the 55,000 or so needed signatures to show how strongly people feel about this, Levesque said.

“I feel the taxpayers in the state, we are all being forced to accept this at a very fast pace,” she said. “Just in our area alone people in the town of Jay are going to have to pay more taxes as well as people in Livermore and Livermore Falls. … I think consolidation of classes and services is a good idea and would work without having to combine systems and it would be fairer to the kids.”

Levesque said she thinks that more opportunities could be offered to students without combining school systems and there would be savings at the local education level.

School leaders in Jay and SAD 36 along with the state consultant hired to facilitate regional planning committees for a new consolidated system have said previously they don’t expect the law to go away because of its connection to the state budget.

Petitioners are hoping if they cannot get the law repealed that their effort would at least slow the consolidation pace so that people can put more thought into the planning stages, Levesque said.

The state promised taxpayers it would fund 55 percent of education, she said, but it’s not.

“I’m upset because of the way they’re going about it,” she said. “I’m not going to stand on a street corner to collect signatures. I think that if people have enough interest, they’ll call and arrangements can be made.”

Her number is 897-5555.

“I’ve never done anything like this before and after talking to people at the polls and realizing there were a lot of people who wanted to sign this, I wanted to find a way to bring the petition here,” she said. “I feel there is a need to have access to the petition in lower Franklin County.”