Katahdin area school merger plan rejected Committee votes down bill to create alliance for Millinocket, Union 113

AUGUSTA – A proposal to merge the Millinocket School Department with School Union 113, which is composed of East Millinocket and Medway, suffered defeat last week at the hands of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs.

During an April 13 work session, the committee voted 9-0 “ought not to pass” for LD 1956, the bill that would have created a School Leadership District covering the three communities.

Developed by local residents and Keith Ober, interim superintendent for the two school systems, the SLD would have merged the three towns into a single district under a single superintendent and a 15-member board.

The goal of the SLD was to share collective resources among the towns while maintaining individual facilities.

In a recent letter to some of the proposal’s supporters, Ober said that a mix-up in the Legislature’s Revisor of Statutes Office played a role in the bill’s downfall. The revisor’s office is where draft proposals are crafted into legislation to be considered by lawmakers.

The problem occurred when the revisor’s office apparently used an earlier working draft to shape the language for LD 1956, thereby omitting key language that had been included in a final draft, Ober explained in the letter.

Among the omissions was language that ensured “all negotiated employment contracts would be honored, and that the new district board would bargain with labor groups for successor contracts,” the letter said.

As a result of the omissions in the bill’s language, the East Millinocket and Millinocket teachers’ associations sent a letter to state and local officials in late March requesting that the plan not be approved.

“Naturally, the absence of any mention of labor contracts caused significant consternation with the local and state teacher associations,” Ober wrote.

Had the correct version of the proposal been submitted, Ober said approval of the proposal still would have been difficult.

The proposal item to allow each board member one equally weighted vote already had raised concerns on a number of occasions, Ober wrote in his letter.

Despite the bill’s defeat, the process was informative, Ober offered in the letter. Supporters of future efforts should take their time and insist on the participation of affected groups, Ober said.

Ober was not available for comment Wednesday.

While SLD supporters were hoping for a different response in Augusta, just developing the proposal has been beneficial, according to Belinda Hobbs, chairwoman of the education team from the Katahdin region vision committee. The committee contributed ideas to the concept.

Meeting and talking about the SLD has brought a new level of cooperation among the three towns in people thinking about education, she said.

“People have talked with each other where they wouldn’t have even two or three years ago,” Hobbs said Wednesday. “That truly is landmark.”

The SLD was only one of the plans on which the subcommittee worked, Hobbs said, adding that the group remains dedicated to maximizing educational opportunities in a cost-effective manner.