MDI school post attracts few applicants

BAR HARBOR – The search for a new superintendent for School Union 98 has turned up only nine applicants in a nationwide search, a school official said Saturday.

Glenon Friedmann of Bar Harbor, chairwoman of the search committee, said all but two of the applicants live in Maine. She was not sure why such an attractive location as Mount Desert Island did not draw more candidates, but speculated that the governing structure of a school union may have put off some people.

“In general I would say the position of superintendent is not as popular as it used to be,” she said. “… The union structure is a difficult one for a superintendent to run, and people who apply from out of state don’t understand them very well.”

Of the 34 inquiries the search committee received, most were from out of state, yet only two of the actual applicants live outside Maine.

The search committee hopes to whittle the field down to two or three finalists and make its recommendation to the full Union 98 School Committee by mid-February, Friedmann said.

The committee advertised the superintendent vacancy in national publications such as Education Week, as well as the Portland and Bangor newspapers. The job opening also was posted on the Education Week and Maine School Management Association Web sites.

Friedmann said the committee has no salary range for the new superintendent. “I can tell you it will be above $80,000” a year, she said.

Outgoing Superintendent Howard Colter, who has served the union for 11 years, also speculated that the governing structure of the MDI school system might have contributed to the limited interest in the job.

The Maine School Management Association, along with other groups, has concerns about how a school union functions. Those concerns have been aired statewide with school boards and administrators, according to Colter.

“A school union is probably as difficult a superintendency as you’re going to find,” Colter said. “… That may have some bearing on the number of applicants who have applied for the job.”

A school administrative district, or SAD, is governed by a single school board, although it represents numerous communities. There is just one budget and one bargaining unit for teacher contracts.

In a school union, however, each town in the union has its own school board, which governs the local elementary school. Each town board negotiates with its teachers and each operates with its own budget.

Union 98 includes the four communities on MDI as well as Swans Island, Frenchboro and Cranberry Isles. That computes to seven school boards for elementary education alone, in addition to a separate board – composed of all of the smaller boards – which governs the administration of the union.

Additionally, the regional high school on MDI is governed by a separate school board, as well as a second board that oversees capital improvements to the high school.

All told, Colter works for 10 elected school boards.

There are 32 school unions remaining in Maine, compared to about 140 school administrative districts or municipal school departments.

Elected school officials on MDI have balked at abandoning the union system in favor of a more efficient SAD, mostly because the local towns want total control over their elementary schools, including curriculum and teacher salaries.

The subject was broached again this month, but there was no extensive discussion of the idea.