SAD 31 project killed

SACO – Citing the project’s expense and declining enrollment projections, the state Board of Education rejected education Commissioner Susan Gendron’s advice and voted 7-2 Wednesday to kill SAD 31’s latest attempt to build a new $8.9 million secondary school in Howland.

The vote ends more than five years of efforts to replace aging, moldy Penobscot Valley High School and sends a strong signal to other small state school districts that consolidation with other SADs might be their best hope for providing students with new schools.

“School systems with populations of 300 or less [in their high schools] are a thing of the past, at least with this board,” state Board of Education Vice Chairman Philip A. Dionne said Wednesday.

SAD 31 board Chairman John Neel was disheartened by the vote.

“We’re disappointed, but we have to regroup,” Neel said. “We are going to keep our school open. We just have to figure out how.”

The district’s sharply declining enrollment, which showed 604 district students this fall versus a projected 646, was the board’s first consideration, member Jean Gulliver said. State projections placed student populations at that level by the 2008-09 school year.

The sagging population, combined with SAD 31’s operational deficits and estimates charting an increase in district resident per-pupil costs from $3,818 to $6,446 by the 2009-10 school year, made the new school impossible to support, Gulliver said.

SAD 31 has “reached a point where it’s too small and too costly,” Gulliver said. “Our [population] projections were very conservative, and even those showed that the school system is too small and too expensive to maintain a new school.

“That’s why we have been urging them for several years to find a way to coordinate with another district,” she added, “not necessarily [with] a merging. There are a lot of different governances they might take.”

Only remotely located school systems for which mergers are exceedingly difficult might get state funding for new schools, said Dionne, who voted against rejecting the SAD 31 concept.

Neel and SAD 31 interim Superintendent Ann Bridge had hoped the state board would grant them 30 days to study the recently released projection figures and cost estimates, which surprised Neel and Bridge at the Oct. 6 state board building committee meeting.

The state board’s vote Wednesday to table the plan for 30 days ended 4-4 with one board member abstaining.

SAD 31 questioned the veracity of the state population projections, saying projections compiled by a South Portland firm it hired to do such estimates failed to show such drastic downturns. Exactly how much SAD 31 spent preparing the $8.9 million plan was not immediately available Wednesday.

Gendron, even in supporting the new school plan, said the state estimates were entirely in line with projections and actual population decreases.

School populations are declining across the state, she has said. She could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Dionne voted against rejecting the concept because he felt that both sides should get more time to study the population projections.

“I thought there should be some kind of agreement if we’re looking at the same numbers,” he said.

He supported the $8.9 million plan because he felt it was the best solution SAD 31 could produce.

Neel hoped that the state board would approve the concept and give residents of the district, which covers Burlington, Edinburg, Enfield, Howland, Maxfield and Passadumkeag, a chance to vote on the plan.

“There were doubts that our community could afford it,” Neel said. “I don’t know how they know that – they don’t know our community – but that’s what they said.”

The SAD 31 board will hold a workshop at 7 tonight at PVHS to consider its options, Neel said.

With parts of it dating to 1952, the current Penobscot Valley High School has been cited as substandard. One of the school’s main wings is closed off because of roof problems.

State board members liked the new school design, which has been characterized as a good plan to build a state-of-the-art facility for grades 7-12 with a newly renovated fitness center for students and residents, a new consolidated student services center and main entrance and a new industrial technology complex.

The school plan had supporters and enemies. 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 nearby SAD 67.

Another group, called PVHSOS, ardently supported the new school plan, wanting to keep the school in Howland.

Friction between the two factions caused controversy with a previous $9.6 million design effort that ended when the state board rejected it in 2002, citing declining enrollment projections and cost.