JAY — There has been a lot of confusion over what is going to happen next year with Jay and Livermore Falls high schools being considered one school but having two campuses, teacher Rob Taylor said.

He brought the issue up during the public session portion of the Jay School Committee meeting on Thursday.

Taylor said he and Superintendent Bob Wall have had discussions on the subject.

With the Jay and RSU 36 boards’ vote to combine sports teams at the high school level as of July 1, Taylor said the way he understands it is that for anything sanctioned by the Maine Principals’ Association, the two campuses would be considered one school and a single program will be established.

Wall agreed that this is what he anticipates the new school board of RSU 73 doing, after it is elected Tuesday, April 19.

According to the Maine Principals’ Association website, sanctioned events, beside athletics, include drama competition, music competition and science fair among others.

However, there would be two separate schools, two yearbooks and two graduations, Taylor said.

Wall said it is also anticipated that there will be two different valedictorians.

The high school Envirothon teams are not sanctioned by the Maine Principals’ Association so that would be separate, Taylor said. He is the advisor for the Jay teams. The math teams are also separate, he said.

His biggest concern, Taylor said, is that it is April and the kids are going to be walking through school doors in five months for the new school year and will everything be worked out.

Another concern, he said, is students from Jay, Livermore and Livermore Falls having school choice in whether to attend the North Campus in Jay or the South Campus in Livermore Falls.

Will people know they can choose the high school they want to attend? Taylor asked. Students currently take classes at either school, Wall said, and some students decide to take all of their classes at one or the other schools.

“This is a precursor for us getting together in one place,” Wall said.

Taylor also questioned what will be on the diplomas and how the valedictorians will be chosen at each campus if students decide to change schools.

This brings up a whole myriad of issues that will need to be addressed, Taylor said.

“Either way we do this, we’re going to have issues,” Wall said.

The new school board will have a great deal of work to do before school starts next year, he said.

“My biggest frustration is we had a plan to have two separate high schools,” Taylor said.

A subcommittee of the Regional Planning Committee, which put the plan together that voters adopted in January, recommended that the two high schools stay separate during the first year of consolidation and the two middle schools consolidate at the Jay school.

One factor for that recommendation was that Livermore Falls High School stay open so that it can accept the second year of federal grant money to improve student achievement. If the high school closed, the district would not get the money.

According to RSU 36 Superintendent Sue Pratt, Jay staff will be able to participate in professional development opportunities at the Livermore Falls school next year.

Another factor is neither school could hold all the students at this time.

If the plan that the adopted was followed, Taylor said, then everybody would know the answers, instead of having to try and answer questions on the fly.

School Committee member Darcie Comstock asked if a college would recognize a valedictorian from each of the two campuses of Spruce Mountain High School. That is the name students chose to name the high school.

Logistically, there are still two sites, Wall said.

“I hope the diplomas says Spruce Mountain High School and not campus A and B,” committee member Michael Schaedler said.

“Yet you could be valedictorian of Campus A,” Taylor said. “I wish we had stuck with the plan.”

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