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Two more joint, public hearings on proposed consolidation of Jay and RSU 36 school systems are scheduled.

When: 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 5, at the Livermore Elementary School, 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 12, at the Livermore Falls High School.

Information pertaining to the plan can be located on jay schools.org and rsu36.org. Answers to questions that are submitted will also be offered on the sites.

JAY — About 40 people attended the first of three public hearings Wednesday night on a proposed plan to merge Jay and RSU 36 into one school system.

Some concerns were raised; some positive support voiced.

A few Jay residents said they didn’t think it fair that there would be only six Jay members on a new school board compared to a combined seven — four in Livermore Falls and three in Livermore. Taxpayers in Jay would pay more but have less say, they said.

The 13-member board is based on one person, one vote, which is required by state law and the Constitution, said Clint Boothby of Livermore, Reorganization Planning Committee chairman.

Voters in the three towns in a combined vote tally would make decisions on major items including budgets and building a new school, not the school board, Jay Superintendent Robert Wall said, in response to a question.

Other concerns raised by Jay residents were giving higher valued property including school buildings to the new regional school unit and paying 71.7 percent of the portion of the budget that exceeds the state education subsidy with a required local match.

RSU 36 was established in the 1960s as a school administrative district. The property used for school purposes, owned in each town, was given to SAD 36. Fayette was also a member of the district at one time and withdrew, and received its elementary school property back.

Jay remains a department of the town and the town owns the school property. If consolidation is approved on Tuesday, Jan. 25, then that property would be part of the new system.

Ken Jacques, a Reorganization Planning Committee member from Livermore Falls, who also owns a business in Jay, said that if “for sale” signs were put up in front of any of the schools, they would have no resale value other than the land they sit on.

No one is in the market to buy school buildings, he said.

For example, it was initially thought that the former Jay town office could be sold for roughly $125,000, when in fact it sold for only $25,000, Jacques said.

A combined school system that offers a variety of courses to students in a cost-efficient way would attract more productive, young families to the area, Jacques said.

Jay has the higher valuation of the three towns at about $1 billion due to Verso Paper Corp.’s Androscoggin Mill, which pays more than 50 percent of Jay’s taxes, Wall said.

When Rumford joined several other towns to form a new school system, each town gave something to it, but Rumford gave the most due to having a paper mill and a higher valuation, he said. Rumford only has three votes on the new school board, he said.

The amount that would have been shared in the current budget year if the two systems were combined, would have been $1.59 million or 7 percent, Wall said. Together the systems have nearly an $18.5 million budget.

If combined, Jay taxpayers would have paid $39,674.67 less than they paid, and both Livermore and Livermore Falls would have paid more, $20,409.40 and $19,265.27, respectively.

“I’d personally like to offer a more comprehensive system,” RSU 36 Superintendent Sue Pratt said. Currently each system is down to bare bones, she said.

It is really an injustice to students, she said.

Three Jay teachers said that they’ve watched as budgets have been cut, and staff and courses reduced over the years.

They spoke in favor of consolidation, admitting that it may be hard at first, but combining resources would enable the new school system to offer more to students and still satisfy the need to keep education costs contained. Instead of two teachers teaching the same class 2 miles apart, one teacher could teach that course and another could teach something else, Wall said. The curricula are very similar, he said. With projected enrollment and revenue continuing to decline, he said, taxpayers in each school system, if consolidation fails, would pay more for less services.

“If nothing changes, nothing changes,” Jay High School Principal Gilbert Eaton of Livermore Falls said. He named several items that are no longer offered at Jay High School including family and consumer science, formerly known as home economics, business classes and freshmen sports teams.

Academic classes and co-curriculum activities will continue to decline if nothing is done, he said.

dperry@sunjournal.com