HARRINGTON – While working through the budget for 2005-2006, members of the SAD 37 board also must settle another matter: finding a new superintendent.

George Kiley last week informed the board of his plans to return to his native New York state.

He is going to the western New York city of Hornell, population 13,000, which is known for its boom years along the Erie Railway. He will work as the superintendent of the Hornell City School District, which has 1,900 students, a staff of 275 and an annual budget of nearly $24 million.

SAD 37, which serves Milbridge, Cherryfield, Harrington, Addison, Columbia and Columbia Falls, has 811 students among its five elementary schools and Narraguagus High School. The staff numbers about 180 and next year’s budget is projected to be $7,833,000.

Kiley is completing his third year overseeing SAD 37. He came to Maine from Geneva, N.Y.

He now earns slightly more than $83,000 and was projected to earn $86,000 next year, if he had decided to stay. The salary Kiley will receive in Hornell was not available on Monday.

Kiley notified the SAD 37 board of his decision to leave at its regular meeting last Wednesday. He informed teachers and staff by letter on Friday.

“Our time together has been wonderful,” Kiley wrote to them. “You should be proud of the work you do for the children in SAD 37. Every aspect of our district continues to produce a quality environment for the children of this area. You should all be commended for the work you’ve done with me over these past three years.”

He did not address his reasons for leaving in his letter or identify Hornell as his destination.

On Monday, he said he was leaving to be closer to his children and in-laws.

“It’s more about family,” he said. “It was a hard choice for us to make. We like this place.”

SAD 37’s elementary pupils achieved statewide success this year with the announcement in September that its Maine Educational Assessment scores made SAD 37 the highest-performing district in the state.

Kiley credited the turnaround in test scores to the Thoughtful Education program he introduced to SAD 37. Thoughtful Education is the work of New Jersey education consultant Harvey Silver, whom Kiley called to consult with the district just weeks after his own arrival here in 2002.

“Look good and sound smart!” became the theme for students, staff and faculty alike throughout SAD 37 schools.

Kiley leaves the district at a time when it faces a $764,000 shortfall in state funding for the 2006-2007 school year. The budget hit is an outcome of LD 1, which adjusts state funding levels based on Essential Programs and Services.

Kiley and SAD 37’s board chairman Steve Pagels made numerous trips to Augusta over the winter to lobby for more resources for Maine’s most-rural schools.

The district faced the $764,000 loss in the 2005-2006 budget; however, Kiley and others convinced lawmakers and the Department of Education to rework formulas, restore transition funding and delay imposing the funding cuts by one year.

Kiley and Pagels also worked with DOE officials last year on a fast-track plan to bring a vocational school to lower Washington County. The SAD 37 board went ahead with the purchase of 40 acres along U.S. Route 1 in Jonesboro before the State Planning Office withheld its support for the project last May.

A vocational complex that also serves the community and adult education needs remains in the works, however, rescued by Gov. John Baldacci’s inclusion of it in his bond package.

Tentatively called the Sunrise Business and Career Center, it is being proposed as an $8 million facility with 41,000 square feet at the Jonesboro site.

Kiley, 59, made his pitch for the Hornell superintendency on April 20. He told the Hornell school board at that meeting that he has family throughout New York and Pennsylvania, making Hornell “a good fit.”

The Hornell newspaper, the Evening Tribune, quoted Kiley as saying, “I am not a migrant worker,” noting that he added there is a throng of superintendent vacancies in New York and he is not applying for all of them.

“I am not going to be here for just three years,” he said.

Kiley has been in education since 1968, except for a two-year stint with one of McGraw-Hill’s textbook companies. He has held school administrative positions for 23 years.

Kiley leaves a district facing decisions on how to handle teaching vacancies created by retirements. An all-district meeting for parents and others is set for 7 p.m. Thursday, May 5, at Harrington Elementary School.

The board is considering two options – having combined grades in some schools with low enrollments, or moving pupils from one elementary school to another in grades with extremely small numbers.

That second option could potentially affect four of the district’s elementary schools – Cherryfield, Columbia Falls, D.W. Merritt (Addison) and Milbridge – for grades one, two, four and five.