State to mull SAD 31’s $8.9M school project

AUGUSTA – A state education official expressed concern Wednesday that declining 10-year enrollment projections will make SAD 31’s $8.9 million proposed secondary school too expensive to build or maintain.

Ellie Multer, chairwoman of the three-member Maine Department of Education’s construction committee, said she was generally satisfied with a presentation SAD 31 officials made during a two-hour meeting on Monday on the proposed grade seven-through-12 school.

The committee will meet at 9 a.m. today to decide whether to recommend concept approval of the project to the state board of education for its meeting Oct. 12. The meeting will be held in Room 103b of the Burton M. Cross Office Building at 111 Sewall St.

Multer said the project might face difficulty because of its cost and because of projections done in 2003 by the Maine State Planning Office that show SAD 31’s total population declining from an estimated 649 pupils in 2005 to 595 in 2015.

“The issue here is not the specifics of the plan,” Multer said Wednesday. “The issue here is whether building a new school is the right thing to do in this district, whether a school which will have as few people as this one will have can maintain an adequate education program.”

According to that projection, the grade nine-12 population would decline from 207 pupils to 170 pupils in 2015. While that number would be bolstered in the new school by seventh- and eighth-grade pupils, the projection shows a similar decrease in SAD 31’s sixth- to eighth-grade pupils, from 164 students in 2005 to 139 in 2015.

The study does not show projections for pupils in grades seven-12.

“There is a passage in state law that requires the state board of education, if it approves a high school for less than 300 students, to be sure that they will have an adequate education program,” Multer said. “I think it’s not hard to assume that those requirements were put in there because there was concern that as the enrollment gets smaller, it becomes more difficult to [economically] maintain an adequate education.”

SAD 31 board Chairman John M. Neel said he believes the proposed building plan fulfills all state requirements. He will respond to concerns about the projected enrollment at today’s meeting, Neel said.

“I will say that it is most important that our district be allowed to vote. If the people truly don’t want it, then we will deal with that, but we have to vote,” Neel said Wednesday.

Building architect Steve Rich was somewhat skeptical of the population estimates, but said a company that SAD 31 employed to do population estimates also predicted a downturn.

“I don’t know enough about the methodology to know how accurate they [the Maine State Planning Office] are and I would like to think they are portraying across the state a gloomier projection than will actually come to be,” Rich said Wednesday.

The school project, which has been in the works since February, has drawn some significant support. Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron recommended the state board approve it in a letter she wrote that will be given to the board Oct. 12.

Several hundred residents of SAD 31 also approved it in a straw vote meeting last month.

The building’s cost has drawn opponents. A group of residents from Enfield, Burlington and Passadumkeag has been circulating petitions against the construction, saying that taxpayers cannot afford the new school and recommending merging high schools with SAD 67.

One of the group’s leaders, Enfield resident Stephen Grey, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Wednesday.

School advocates maintain that a new building is overdue. A previous attempt to build a school stalled in the design phase in 2002, partially, Multer said, because of concerns with declining enrollment.

With parts of it dating to 1952, the present Penobscot Valley High School in Howland was cited as substandard by the Commission on Public Secondary Schools at the New England Association of Schools & Colleges Inc.

According to a statement interim SAD 31 Superintendent Ann Bridge gave Gendron, if approved, the new school shall have:

. A newly renovated fitness center for students and residents.

. A new consolidated student services center and main entrance and a new industrial technology complex.

. A new food services area and a cafeteria area that will serve double and triple duty as an academic honor center and a fine arts backstage site.