KINGFIELD – Two western Maine school districts are considering sharing costs and services without losing their identities or sacrificing quality education.

SAD 58 board Chairwoman Judy Dill and Superintendent Quenten Clark,  SAD 74 Chairman Andy Davis and Superintendent Kenneth Coville, and members of both boards completed a Maine Department of Education checklist Tuesday evening and plan to submit the draft agreement by Friday.

The officials said they hope to save at least $95,000, while eliminating penalties for not consolidating within a state-mandated time frame.

The districts will retain their school boards but have a 10-member consolidated board, which would perform duties assigned by interlocal agreements. SAD 58 towns of Strong, Phillips, Kingfield Avon and Stratton would each have a member on the consolidated school board; Solon, North Anson and Embden would have one and Anson would have two.

 “Our schools are much more similar than they are different, and our communities are much more similar than different,” Coville said.

 The districts share the services of a special education director, who will have one full-time and one part-time assistant. Currently, SAD 74 has two part-time Individual Education Plan coordinators for grades kindergarten to seven and grades eight to 12, while SAD 58 does not.

 The two districts’ five full-time and one half-time administrative assistant positions would be reduced to four full-time positions. Curriculum coordination has been administered by the two superintendents and their principals, and the committee reviewed the possibility of hiring an assistant superintendent to assume that duty.

They decided not to approve $50,000 to create that position, and instead, agreed to share a single superintendent. SAD 58 director Mike Pond objected to the elimination of a curriculum coordinator.

 “For somebody else to come in and pick up a position without knowing all the players and what’s going on, I cannot see right now how you can do all of these functions with one superintendent,” he said.

 The committee decided against creating the new position, with SAD 58 directors Ellen James and Pond opposing the choice.

 “If we’re going to tell the general public that we’re going to save $100,000 right off, we want to make sure this works,” James said. “We don’t want to go back and ask for the money later.”

Transportation services include scheduling and paperwork, but employees also drive the buses, fix them and perform other nonadministrative functions. The proposed transportation administration budget was presented as a half-time position, at $31,000. Ultimately, the committee agreed to move $5,000 into administrative costs as a stipend, with $2,500 coming from each district’s transportation budget.

If approved by the Department of Education, the consolidated system will develop a single budget based on each district’s schools’ needs. State government will treat the system as one fiscal unit for calculating Essential Programs and Services and General Purpose Subsidies. The two groups  will determine the allocation of those monies, including costs not covered by state funding.

 Voters in each district could go to the polls in early February to decide whether to approve the consolidation plan.