PARIS — Superintendent Rick Colpitts told the SAD 17 board of directors Monday that Otisfield Elementary School will begin converting to a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school, if the proposed $39.1 million budget is passed by voters in June.

The Otisfield school houses kindergarten through grade four. Fifth- and sixth-graders from Otisfield attend Oxford Elementary School, but that building is “out of room,” Colpitts said.

The problem, he told directors, is that the Oxford school needs another fourth-grade classroom next fall to accommodate more students and there isn’t room for one.

The answer is to keep the current fourth-grade class at Otisfield instead of having them come to Oxford in the fall, Colpitts said. A fifth-grade teaching position would be created at Otisfield.

“It will be a two-year growing process to return Otisfield to K-6,” he said.

In 2010, faced with a $2.6 million reduction in state aid, voters unanimously approved a $33.9 million budget that implemented a plan for a kindergarten through grade four school in each community and eliminated 2½ principal positions. It saved about $210,000.

Colpitts said Monday night that while some schools are losing or just maintaining enrollment, others such as Oxford Elementary are continuing to gain students.

Enrollment figures from March 2016 show Oxford has 56 third-graders and 38 fourth-graders. Otisfield has 17 third-graders and 13 fourth-graders.

ldixon@sunmediagroup.net

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