BAILEYVILLE – The idea of consolidating the three high schools in eastern Washington County is not popular, but a few people are looking at ways to save taxpayers money by consolidating services.

Walter McIntire, a retired university professor and consultant, met Wednesday with officials from Union 104, 106 and 107 – Eastport, Calais and Baileyville – to talk about consolidation.

“Regionalization is a dirty word in a lot of quarters,” he said. “A lot of people say when you talk regionalization you are talking about closing my school. … I want to make it very clear I don’t believe in that.”

And McIntire brought along a truckload of information to show how some form of consolidation was needed.

The total budget for the three unions is around $24 million.

“You’re spending a million and a quarter on administration. You’ve got three superintendents, I don’t know what they make, but between salaries and fringe benefits you are spending $300,000 for superintendents. That’s $150 a kid. That’s more money than if you had a superintendent and an assistant superintendent. You could eliminate one of those and you’d be down to $100 a kid,” McIntire said.

The three districts service about 2,000 students. “There are lots of school districts with 2,000 kids in it. Most of them have a superintendent, assistant superintendent and one special ed director. You could have one high school, but I’m not sure that’s feasible up here given the distance [between schools].”

Using charts, he said another major cost was subsidizing tuition pupils from towns without high schools.

Calais High School has 280 students. Of those 33 are tuition students. Woodland High School in Baileyville has 199 students, with 66 tuition students. And Shead High School in Eastport has 158 students, 80 of which are tuition students.

State tuition is around $6,875 per pupil. But it costs more to send students to high school in eastern Washington County.

The per-pupil cost to send a student to Shead is $7,889. “That’s $1,014 more than tuition. So in essence the people of Eastport are spending $1,014 above what they get in tuition for each student. In other words, Eastport is subsidizing its tuition students to the tune of $79,000,” he said.

Calais is subsidizing its tuition students at a rate of $42,000 per year, while Baileyville, which has one of the highest per pupil costs in the state, pays an additional $239,000 for its tuition students.

“What that tells me is there are some real inefficiencies in the high schools,” he said. “The inefficiencies can only come [either] by too many staff or too small classes. I suspect it’s a combination of both.”

Another problem the three unions face is declining enrollment.

From 1995 to 2004, Washington County lost about 20 percent of its school enrollment, the former professor said.

And Mainers aren’t getting any younger, he added. With an aging population, enrollments are expected to decline even more.

“We are getting older faster than any state in the union. What that means is fewer kids, fewer people of childbearing age and more old people and more demand for health services,” he said. “Schools soon are going to be competing with us old people for services.”

There are solutions other than closing schools. McIntire suggested looking at creating a central administrative office and consolidating costs for fuel and supplies.

It was clear from the discussion that those at the meeting want to know more. Another meeting has been scheduled for March 20, in Calais.

Baileyville Town Council Chairman Linda Rayner said Thursday that the meeting would be open to the public and would include superintendents, school committees and community leaders. “This is not about doing away with schools, it’s just consolidating resources,” she said.

It then will be up to the three unions to decide whether they want to hire McIntire to conduct a survey of their school unions.