MEXICO — The Regional School Unit 56 board of directors voted Tuesday to extend Superintendent Pam Doyen’s contract and give her a 2 percent raise, board Chairwoman Barbara Chow said Wednesday evening.

The extension run through 2021.

Doyen was hired in 2017 to lead the newly formed district that includes the towns of Dixfield, Canton, Carthage and Peru.

In other business, the board discussed the possibility of forming a regional service center with 10 other school districts.

“The intent of the regional service center is to use the Western Maine Educational Collaborative as kind of our base point and offer many selected items such as participating in virtual high school or participating in professional development activities for teachers and staff,” Doyen said.

Doyen said the 10 districts are RSU 10 in Rumford, SAD 44 in Bethel, RSU 58 in Kingfield, RSU 59 in Madison, RSU 73 in Jay, RSU 74 in Anson, RSU 78 in Rangeley, and Eustis, Fayette and Lisbon School Departments.

“We have been working with a facilitator, Mike Cormier, and we have also asked Drummond Woodsum (law offices) to write a draft interlocal agreement,” Doyen said.

In other business, Jasmine Dixon-Saindon, a Dirigo High School senior and student representative on the school board, said some of her classmates want to decorate their graduation caps for their commencement ceremony next spring.

She presented a PowerPoint on the pros and cons at the request of Principal Lisa Twomey and Doyen. She said two teachers were concerned about how the caps might be decorated.

Twomey told the board she and the high school teachers would have to have the final say about whether or not a student’s cap was appropriately decorated.

“It has to be a very transparent process of what’s going to be on this cap,” Twomey said. “As I told Jasmine, I wouldn’t even want abbreviations, I wouldn’t want symbols that I don’t even recognize. I would be looking at a sketch (of the cap) ahead of time and it has to be at the complete discretion of teachers in the building to make a decision.”

mhutchinson@sunmediagroup.net

Jasmine Dixon-Saindon, a senior at Dirigo High School in Dixfield, addresses the Regional School Unit 56 board Tuesday in Mexico about graduates decorating their caps for next spring’s commencement ceremony. (Rumford Falls Times photo by Marianne Hutchinson)

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