March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

SAD 12 may pick up pupils from The Forks> Special meeting called to consider acceptance

JACKMAN — Pupils from The Forks Plantation appear to be heading north to school for the first time this fall, rather than south to Bingham.

The SAD 12 board of directors has called a special meeting for 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 6, at the Forest Hills Consolidated School to decide on the acceptance of children from The Forks as tuition-paying students. If the board approves the measure, the students will attend the SAD 12 school for the first time. Previously, they went to the SAD 13 schools.

The action will involve four schoolchildren, two in high school and two in elementary school.

SAD 12, representing the towns of Jackman and Moose River, has about 200 K-12 pupils in one building. SAD 13, a K-12 district with 400 pupils in four different school buildings, includes Bingham, Moscow, Caratunk and West Forks Plantation.

The vote by SAD 12 next week represents the end of a journey down “a long and frustrating road,” Dale Doughty, agent, or superintendent for The Forks School Department said Thursday. It will be the first time in two years that Forks’ residents will have had a legal place to educate their children.

In June 1998, taxpayers of the plantation in a two-thirds vote withdrew their membership from SAD 13 rather than pay an assessment of more than $100,000 for two children to go to the district’s schools that year.

Maine Education Commissioner J. Duke Albanese then approved the withdrawal.

Under the original withdrawal agreement, Forks pupils were permitted to attend SAD 13 schools for one year. The SAD 13 board in the fall of 1999 then voted against allowing the schoolchildren to be tuitioned to the district again this coming September.

The SAD 13 board members said they did not want to encourage other small communities in the district to follow the example of The Forks.

In December 1999, after mediation talks supervised by a Maine Department of Education lawyer, The Forks proposed a three-year plan that would have paid SAD 13 the state-set tuition rate for each youth, a $2,500-per-pupil fee and busing expenses. The directors this winter tabled the tuition proposal, instead sending a special board delegation to meet with Albanese. The Forks’ board members met separately with the commissioner.

Albanese recommended a five-year plan for the two school departments, provided they would agree to enter into mediation, at their expense, by April 30 with an eye toward making a tuition arrangement for the fall and a possible rejoining of the district by the end of the five years.

In mid-April, just as the SAD 13 board was forming its negotiations team, The Forks board cut off the mediation process and began talking with SAD 12 instead.

“The problem became one of finances,” Doughty said Thursday. “It appeared we would be paying two attorneys and a mediator” an amount close to the original cost of SAD 13 membership.

The plantation will propose to pay for transportation and tuition. The Forks board recently voted to purchase its own school bus for the daily 25-mile trip, Doughty said.

“They’re working out the specs for the bus,” he added.


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