MILFORD – A. Keith Ober, superintendent of School Union 90 for eight years, submitted his resignation at a joint school board meeting recently, citing the inability of the four towns in the school system to work well together, among other reasons.

Ober’s resignation follows a year of turmoil in the school union, which consists of the towns of Milford, Greenbush, Alton and Bradley.

Ober earns about $70,000 annually and heads a school union with a $10 million budget, about 1,250 students and 155 staff members. About 800 of the students are sent to high schools in area towns on tuition.

Ober said he no longer could work in a system composed of towns with differing educational philosophies and values.

Union 90 “is composed of four disparate towns that do not have an awful lot in common except geography,” Ober said.

In recent years, statewide concern has mounted over the dearth of qualified school superintendents. News reports tell of professionals leaving the positions at a record pace, as well as fewer people applying to fill the vacancies mostly because of the political complexity of the job.

School Union 90’s structure is an example of the complexity born of communities’ attempting to consolidate to share educational costs. Its problems have caused the immediate past chairwoman of the Union 90 joint school boards to write to the commissioner of education seeking a review of the Union 90 system.

“I think it is structured wrong,” said Julia O’Leary of Milford, who chaired the joint board until Dec. 12.

Each of the four towns in Union 90 has a five-member school committee that meets monthly. The four school boards also gather every other month to meet on Union 90 issues.

At the Dec. 12 joint school boards meeting, the majority of members ultimately declined to accept Ober’s resignation. The career superintendent said this week that he would leave anyway when the school year ends in June.

O’Leary called it a “shame he’s leaving. Nobody’s perfect. Our board [in Milford] never had a problem with him. Some of the other boards – some have and some haven’t,” O’Leary said.

“I have always been able to talk with him and he gave me a straight answer,” O’Leary said.

“I’m 72 and [have] been a businesswoman all my life. I wouldn’t want to be the superintendent of a school union,” O’Leary said.

She said the school union’s makeup is “very odd. There are four schools and two [in Milford and Greenbush] are kindergarten to the eighth grade and two others are K-5 schools. There are 68 kids in the Bradley school and 50 kids in the Alton school. I think the smaller towns sometimes feel they don’t have enough say in the process, but they have advantages others in the system don’t.

“It’s almost like getting a private-school education there,” O’Leary said of schools in Bradley and Alton, because of the relatively low student populations.

About a year ago, the joint school boards split on whether to give Ober a $5,000 raise and a contract extension. By law, the joint school boards have to meet each December to discuss the superintendent’s employment. As the time approached to discuss his contract again, Ober said he was told by the Alton School Committee chairman that the town would not support the renewal of his contract. He apparently did garner continuing support from other boards and probably could have gained enough votes to remain on the job, Ober said.

However, Ober said, his ability to do the job would be negatively affected with one-fourth of the school union not supporting him.

“If that happened, I would be an elected superintendent where one town in the union has said ‘we don’t agree with this nomination,’ which means the union isn’t working well together,” Ober said.

There have been other disagreements, such as the adoption of new curriculums and of collective bargaining agreements, Ober said. Adding to the problem is the near constant turnover of school board members. Since his arrival in 1994, Ober said, 56 people have rotated through positions on the joint boards. The system also has a high turnover rate among administrators and support staff, according to Ober. The differing values reflected in the union boards have translated into confusion at the education level, where statewide assessment scores are mediocre at best, the superintendent said.

“It is my feeling the union doesn’t know what it wants,” Ober said.

Ober’s style has angered some residents of Alton, the town with the smallest population in the union. Residents there, including the head of the town’s local school committee, claim the superintendent has made mistakes in certain billing and payment operations – and that errors considered serious by some have been passed off as minor crises. Alton Selectman Ron Borja, in a letter published Dec. 18 in the Bangor Daily News, complained that Ober did not administer union policies consistently and questioned his hiring practices.

Theresa McCauley, chairwoman of the Alton School Committee, said it was she who told Ober the Alton School Committee would vote 5-0 not to renew his contract.

Problems “have been ongoing for years. We’ve asked him to address the problems and he’s not addressing them,” McCauley said.