AUGUSTA – Commissioner of Education J. Duke Albanese quashed the hopes of SAD 31 residents for a new Penobscot Valley High School building Wednesday by recommending that the state refuse to fund the project.

Albanese said he made his decision because of a state report concluding that SAD 31 (Howland area) should study the feasibility of sending its 230 high school students to Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln, 10 miles down the road in SAD 67.

Jean Gulliver, chairwoman of the State Board of Education, which apportions school construction funds, said the commissioner’s recommendation was the final word, and her group would not be voting on the issue until the two school districts come up with a plan to cooperate.

“As of this point, there will not be a new high school. This isn’t the direction we’re pursuing,” she told the approximately 250 residents of SAD 31’s eight small communities who came to Augusta in school buses to hear first-hand the fate of their high school.

Students stood at the back of the room holding signs that said “PVHS Won’t Quit” and “We Deserve Better” while parents and teachers wore pins with the words “Save Our School.”

The recently completed consultant’s study said the school’s population is declining, its programs are inadequate to meet the state’s Learning Results and the school system doesn’t have the revenue to make changes or support a new facility. It also cited the school’s low Maine Educational Assessment scores and said that it has limited options in math, chemistry, physics and social studies.

Gulliver said during an interview that the state, working with the districts, would “determine what renovations and additions need to take place …”

“It’s up to those two parties how quickly they want to move,” she said.

Although SAD 31 Superintendent Keith Cook asked the board on Wednesday for a public hearing, Gulliver said during the interview such a move “wasn’t part of the process.”

“Nobody gets a public hearing. We can’t treat them differently than we treat anybody else,” she said.

SAD 67 Superintendent Fred Woodman said his district will work with SAD 31 “any way they want us to work.”

“It’s up to [SADs] 67 and 31 to sit down and say ‘what’s best for our kids’ and ‘how do we proceed from here if that’s the route they want to take,'” he said during a phone conversation Wednesday afternoon.

Mattanawcook currently could take 100-125 students without portable classrooms, the superintendent said. “Our capacity’s probably 550 – maybe we can squeeze in 575.”

Wednesday’s gathering illustrates the tug of war occurring between the state, which is pushing school consolidation in light of the decline in population in many rural areas, and local residents who are struggling to hold on to their small schools.

“The high school is our future. What will happen to our community if we no longer have a high school,” said Laurie Babineau of West Enfield, a mother of four. She was one of a number of people who had a turn at the microphone during the meeting.

PVHS students had their own concerns.

“You mix two schools that have been rivals for years and years [and] there will be a lot more tension,” said Cody Thompson, 16, of Howland.

“Kids in Lincoln and Howland don’t get along. They’ll fight something awful,” said Erica Sirois, 16, of West Enfield. She’s already heard kids say they plan to “drop out or go to school in Old Town” if the schools are merged.

Bonnie Lovett of Howland, a member of the SAD 31 school board, pleaded with the State Board not to “use our situation to make [your] case” for regionalization. “Think about what you’re doing to our district. It’s pulling us apart from within,” she said, noting that people are worried about their jobs.

Other residents said they were concerned about the extra travel time, and that people wouldn’t want to move to a town that didn’t have its own high school.

Still others said the report contained “factual errors,” and they wondered why the project was getting more scrutiny than other schools that were in line for state construction funding.

But State Board officials pointed out the law mandates that before they can approve a high school construction project to accommodate fewer than 300 pupils, they must determine whether the school is going to have “an adequate educational program.”

“We have determined that it isn’t,” Gulliver said.

Superintendent Cook maintains the State Board changed its rules and that the project should be “grandfathered under a new policy.”

He said other schools have similar Maine Educational Assessment scores and that the numbers of students who graduate from PVHS “are right up there.” Seventy percent go on to higher education, he said.

Sen. Mary Cathcart, D-Orono, told the board that while the feasibility study makes sense, “I just wish it had happened two years ago before people [started] this whole, long process.”

The district received site approval from the State Board in April. New figures later said it is likely that enrollment will drop below 200 in the next eight years.

Paul LaForge, chairman of the SAD 31 board of directors, said the district still has other options to consider.

“We’re trying to get a formal hearing” with the State Board, he said. “We think it’s unfair for them to make a determination without talking to us one on one.”

The district has been told it could even submit legislation allowing it to build a school, according to LaForge.

“We’re not ready to roll over and play dead yet,” he said.