WALES — Oak Hill High School was one of 10 Maine schools named Tuesday to a list no school wants to be on: qualifying for school improvement money because of poor test scores.

That means Oak Hill, which serves students in Wales, Sabattus and Litchfield, can apply for federal money to make improvements, but there’s a catch: Principal Patricia Doyle, who’s worked at the school for 33 years as a teacher and principal, would have to go, according to the Maine Department of Education.

According to regulations on getting the federal money, a new principal would have to be named. Doyle has been principal for six years. Another school improvement plan includes replacing the principal and half of the teachers, a route taken last year by Lewiston’s Longley Elementary School.

It will be up to the Regional School Unit 4 Board of Directors to decide whether to apply for the school improvement money. Statewide, $4 million is available to be divided among schools that get approved for school improvement grants.

RSU 4 Superintendent Jim Hodgkin said the school board would meet Thursday night to talk about the list. No decision is expected right away, he said.

Hodgkin said he was “completely surprised” to learn Oak Hill was on the list. “We just got accredited,” he said, by the Commission on Public Secondary Schools of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Oak Hill’s test scores in reading and math, the two most important areas, are 10 points below state averages, according to state data. But “all our data shows our school has been making significant improvement,” Hodgkin said. “We got an email from someone in the Department of Education saying they used Oak Hill as a model of a school doing great things.”

Hodgkin said he and the board would look into why Oak Hill made the list. “We want to look at action plans, the school improvement plan, and what it will mean for the removal of our principal, who’s been here for 33 years.”

Removing Doyle would be painful, he said. School improvements under her have included less tracking and offering students syllabus outlines for classes, making student expectations more transparent, Hodgkin said. Sometimes it’s not always clear what a teacher expects.

“We’ve also done a great deal of work on literacy at the high school, understanding that language arts is not something you do in English but across the curriculum,” he said.

Other schools on the “Tier 1” of the list, which means they’d get priority funding, include East End Community School in Portland, Fort Kent Community High School, Ellsworth High School and Southern Aroostook CSD School.

“Tier 2” schools in the list, which means they could get funding if any money is left over, are Hodgdon High School, Madison Area Memorial High School, Nokomis Regional High School, Georges Valley High School and Lawrence High School.

Maine Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin said the 10 schools have below-average test scores but are not the lowest-performing schools in the state.

Under federal guidelines, schools are ranked on three-year averages in math and reading test scores and on how much their scores have improved.

“So it could be a school went from 20 percent to 25 percent proficiency, which is low,” Connerty-Marin said, but because those schools made greater progress, they did not end up on the list.

Oak Hill parents should ask officials what’s being doing to improve test scores and realize that test scores are only one measure of success, Connerty-Marin said. Being on the list “means Oak Hill is not one of the worst schools,” but improvement is needed, he said.

The $4 million in school improvement money is part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus money and is not expected to be offered next year.

[email protected]