Buckfield residents grapple with RSU 10 withdrawal

BUCKFIELD — Residents told the Buckfield Withdrawal Committee they are still uncertain what’s best for students, staying in RSU 10 or forming their own school system.

Nearly two dozen residents attended a public hearing last week called by committee Chairman Glen Holmes to “gauge” what residents wanted to see in a school district.

“If this was a numbers game, this would be easy,” Holmes said. “We could do that in 45 days.”

After two hours of, at times, animated dialogue, residents offered varied opinions on that score.

Kathy Saarinen summarized the views of many residents as she urged the committee to come up with detailed information about the costs of different options for educating students.

She said she did not feel residents were adequately informed to decide whether or not the town should remain in the 12-town district, which includes Canton, Carthage, Dixfield, Peru, Buckfield, Hartford, Sumner, Byron, Mexico, Roxbury, Rumford and Hanover.

RSU 10 was formed in 2009 to comply with the school consolidation law.

“I’m disheartened because we won’t have the facts by the June vote,” Saarinen said.

Some, like withdrawal activist and committee member Judy Berg, advocated pulling out of the district as rising taxes had not translated into better instruction for students.

Others said remaining in the district was the only means of ensuring students had access to the best possible classes, arguing the rise in taxes was a predicament felt by many widely spread, rural school districts.

The question Holmes believed the committee faced was not finding the cheapest route, but the one residents valued the most.

“I can look at test scores throughout all of Western Maine and find bright and dark spots in every school,” Homes said. “I don’t know how to balance which academic area is more important than another area to say, ‘That’s is a better school.'”

Keeping the Buckfield Junior-Senior High School open was central to the views of several residents.

RSU 10 Superintendent Craig King acknowledged that declining enrollment could mean school closure but it would take several years to complete.

Statewide, rural towns struggled to balance providing a “decent” education without breaking the bank, King said.

“You are not alone,” he said.

King, who is proposing cutting some 30 positions in an effort to reduce the district’s 2014-15 budget by $3 million, was noncommittal whether the high school would remain open should Buckfield remain in the district.

RSU 10 has three high schools: Dirigo in Dixfield, Mountain Valley in Rumford and Buckfield. Every few years, those schools face accreditation, a process King said was a vital, but expensive litmus test of facilities.

“I really value external valuation, but on the other hand how can I spend $34,000 when our back is against the wall?” he asked

In June 2013, residents voted to begin withdrawal proceedings, allocating $20,000 to the committee to negotiate an agreement with the district and the Maine Department of Education.

When Buckfield voted to pull out of the district, it appeared as though voters in Hartford and Sumner would follow suit and the three towns would re-form SAD 39.

In November, Sumner voters rejected a withdrawal petition. Hartford has not taken up the issue.

Since then, the committee has made little apparent progress toward formulating a plan, and the state has issued waiver extensions to submit an agreement.

In February, a petition to re-examine whether the residents still wanted to withdraw garnered enough signatures to be placed on a June ballot.

Its organizer, former RSU 10 director Maida Demers-Dobson, said people had changed their minds after developments in Hartford and Sumner.

Residents’ attitudes toward the process, and a lack of how to proceed next, has sent committee members back to the drawing board.

That was the explanation committee member and RSU 10 board member Jerry Wiley used when fellow director Michelle Casey pressed why he and Holmes helped garner signatures for the petition.

“(Residents) still would have had to vote on whatever you chose. Do you not feel comfortable with the citizens of Buckfield making their own decisions that you guys had to go and start a petition to revoke it?,” Casey asked.

Holmes said the input was “helpful” and directed the committee to research the costs to pay tuition for Buckfield’s 100 high school students to attend Leavitt Area High School in Turner and Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris.

Members intend to present findings at their next meeting May 7.

: “Dismayed” at the lack of information available to residents, Kathy Saarinen asked the committee tasked with withdrawing from RSU 10 how the town should proceed.