The Mt. Abram High School sign seen last year in Salem Township. The high school is part of Maine School Administrative District 58, where two of the member towns are petitioning to withdraw from the school district. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal file

STRONG — Residents in Strong and Phillips are petitioning town officials to start the process to withdraw from Maine School Administrative District 58.

Strong residents have already presented the petition to the Select Board. A public hearing on the request is scheduled for 6 p.m. April 28 at the Forster Memorial Building at 14 South Main St., which is attached to the Town Office.

Residents in Phillips have also collected enough signatures and plan to present the petition to the Select Board at its meeting Tuesday, Town Manager Maureen Haley and Town Clerk BJ Bangs wrote in separate emails.

MSAD 58 also includes Kingfield and Avon. Kingfield residents are collecting signatures on a withdrawal petition, but it has not been presented to the town.

“We want to ‘investigate’ and also want to be prepared if one of the other towns pull out — then there will be no district,” Town Manager Leanna Targett wrote in an email Wednesday.

Avon has blank petitions available at the Avon Town House at 1116 Rangeley Road.

It will be up to residents if they want to collect signatures, Jane Thorndike, chairperson of the Avon Select Board, said Wednesday. People are concerned about rising tax assessments and delayed maintenance on schools, she said.

Withdrawing from a school district for a single municipality is a 22-step process, according to state law. Each step needs to be documented in a specific order.

A petition requesting withdrawal from a regional school unit must signed by at least 10% of the number of voters in the municipality who voted in the last gubernatorial election and presented to municipal officers.

Once a petition is submitted, it’s up to municipal officers to call and hold a special election to vote on whether to start the official withdrawal process.

Rising budgets and town tax assessments, dwindling numbers of students and aging school buildings are a concern for many in the four-town district.

The proposed draft budget for the district for 2025-26 is about $12.7 million, which is an increase of $785,108 or a 6.59% , according to Superintendent Laura Columbia.

The towns’ shares in the proposal are increasing this year between 8.52% to 12.19%. The projected number of students for 2025-26 school year is Avon, 59; Kingfield, 90; Phillips, 126; and, Strong, 146.

The projected draft assessments are: Avon, $681,338, an increase of $50,303 or 8.52%; Kingfield, nearly $2.3 million, an increase of about $163,334 or 12.19%; Phillips, $1.3 million, up $128,510 or 9.11%; and Strong, nearly $1.4 million, an increase of $113,561 or 10.05% increase.

The draft budget is scheduled to be finalized Thursday night.

The anticipated revenue projections show a budgeted amount of $1 million for tuition. Several towns and townships in the unorganized territory pay tuition for students to the school, including Carrabassett Valley and Eustis, which was formerly part of the district until 2013, when voters approved withdrawing.

The process in Eustis started with a citizens’ group petition to the Eustis Select Board in 2012 and ended with a vote of the MSAD 58 board vote in 2013.

The district has two pre-kindergarten through fourth grade schools in Kingfield and Phillips, one fifth grade through eighth grade middle school in Strong, and Mt. Abram High School for grades nine through 12 in Salem Township. There are approximately 562 students in the district, including about 118 students residing outside the district.

The district is currently going through a facilities review, Columbia wrote in an email Wednesday.

“(We are) looking at current anticipated expenses for our facilities, as well as the feedback from the community, we will be looking at potentially closing a school in the future. No decisions have been made yet from the school board, but we are looking at data from our facilities study to help guide our recommendations,” Columbia said.

She does not know what will happen if all four towns decide to withdraw from the district.

“I don’t have a direct answer to that yet, but my assumption would be that the district would dissolve,” she wrote. “I do not anticipate that happening, but if and when that does occur, we will seek (Maine Department of Education) guidance and follow their recommendations.”