Straw vote set for proposed SAD 31 school

HOWLAND – Residents in six communities will have a chance to weigh in on SAD 31’s proposed new $8.9 million secondary school during a straw vote meeting on Tuesday.

Coming before an Oct. 12 vote by the State Board of Education, the vote is aimed at giving residents a chance to show that they definitely support the proposed grade 7-12 school.

School officials released a concept proposal for the new building in February. They said that if the project is approved, the “community center” will be open 24 hours a day seven days a week and will offer child day care, senior citizens programming, integrated job training with local businesses for students and job retraining and education for adults while being a school for seventh- to 12th-graders.

The project remains on the state’s construction list, with the state expected to pay a major portion of the project’s cost.

Stephen Rich, the architect from WBRC Architects and Engineers of Bangor, will be on hand at 7 p.m. Tuesday at PVHS to describe the project in detail. So will its other designers: the SAD 31 board’s ad hoc building committee, school staff and board members.

They are required to design the building to meet the needs of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, state programs and staff and community desires, a complex task.

Cost estimates have fluctuated as the building’s design has changed, going from $4.5 million to $6 million to the present figure.

School advocates maintain that a new building is overdue. A previous attempt to build a school stalled in the design phase in 2002.

Citing PVHS’ “substandard facility,” the Commission on Public Secondary Schools at the New England Association of Schools & Colleges Inc. has recommended to the NEASC board of trustees that PVHS be placed on probation.

The school’s closed main hallway, use of portable classrooms, isolated special education students and the need to use the gymnasium to get to the library were among the reasons commission members cited as “significant deficiencies.”

Probation is a warning that the school could lose its accreditation if specific issues are not corrected.

SAD 31 serves Burlington, Edinburg, Enfield, Howland, Maxfield and Passadumkeag.