STRONG – Recommendations to establish a future regional school system covering most of Franklin County will be discussed Thursday.

A regional planning committee has developed a draft plan to combine towns in SAD 9, SAD 58 and Coplin and Highland plantations has been developed after weeks of meetings beginning in September.

The plan is far from complete, SAD 9 Superintendent Michael Cormier said, but a lot of work has been put into it.

The planning committee will have its last meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15, before the Dec. 1 deadline at the Strong Elementary School to decide some final issues.

The plan, if approved by the planning committee, would go to the SAD 9, SAD 58, Coplin and Highland plantations’ boards with a recommendation to those boards to adopt the total proposed plan as presented and as amended including action items to be dealt with Thursday and then be submitted to the state by the Dec. 1 deadline.

Among the items on the agenda will be the planning committee consideration of a name change of the system from Western Mountains Regional School Unit to the Western Mountains Regional School District.

Another issue to be discussed is if the planning committee should adopt a governance representation model as outlined in the proposed plan. A 25-member school board has been approved with representation from all towns and plantations in the combined system with each representative having a weight to their vote based on population.

The planning committee already approved the size of the board but had to adjust the weighted votes of a couple towns.

All of the communities have one representative on the board except for Farmington that has seven and Wilton that has four.

The number of weighted votes per director being proposed are: Coplin Plantation, 133; Highland Plantation, 53: Chesterville, 1,245; Farmington, 1,083; Industry, 784; New Sharon, 1,386, New Vineyard, 774; Temple, 572; Vienna, 565; Weld, 407; Wilton, 1,050; Avon, 493; Eustis, 742; Kingfield, 1,148; Phillips, 1,029; and Strong, 1,228.

The new board will require a 60 percent super majority vote of the members present to pass items.

The planning committee will also consider the governance sub committee’s recommendation that each board representative get paid $25 for each regularly schedule meeting and that they be reimbursed for mileage at a rate established by the new board.

Also on the table is whether the planning committee will accept the finance sub committee’s recommendation on disposition of real and personal school property.

With the exception of Highland Plantation’s Ministerial Land Trust, which would stay with the plantation, all property interests, including land, buildings, other improvements to realty, easements, option rights, first refusal rights, purchase rights, and all fixtures of the school administrative units shall be property of the region.

All other tangible school personal property, including movable equipment, furnishings, textbooks and other curriculum materials, supplies and inventories shall become property of the region as the successor of the school administrative units.

The plan also outlines disposition of existing school indebtedness and lease-purchase agreements and assignment of contractual agreements. Regional school board would assume contracts of administrators including superintendents. SAD 9 superintendent and assistant superintendent contracts expire June 30, 2012, and their counterparts in SAD 58 expire in 2011 and 2010. Coplin and Highland plantations superintendents’ contracts each expire June 30, 2008.

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