Businessman-financier selected to be new Union 96 superintendent

School Union 96, which serves six communities along the eastern Hancock County coast, has picked an established businessman and financier, but a relatively green school administrator, to be its new superintendent.

William Webster Jr., 56, who currently lives in Brunswick, will have his hands full with declining enrollment and consolidation issues when he takes the reins in July from outgoing Superintendent Donald

LaPlante.

“I moved into school administration a little while back and decided that I really like this stuff,” Webster said Wednesday by telephone. “I’ve always been interested in education, but it’s taken me some time to get here. This will essentially be my third career.”

The school board, made up of five separate subcommittees, unanimously voted Tuesday night in favor of hiring Webster, who will take his first-ever job as a school superintendent.

“A lot of administrators would probably like to stay away from unions, but I’m intrigued,” he admitted. “No doubt there have been some pains here, but a lot of the issues are typical of many others [communities] around the state.”

Union 96 serves the Hancock County towns of Franklin, Gouldsboro, Sorrento, Winter Harbor and Sullivan, and Steuben in Washington County.

In recent years, the district has faced declining enrollment, issues related to the Essential Programs and Services funding formula and consolidation, something LaPlante said will keep his replacement busy.

“It has been exhausting,” said LaPlante, who leaves Union 96 to take a superintendent position in White River Junction, Vt., where he and his wife hail from. “But things have been left here in pretty good shape. You always try to leave a position better than when you found it.”

LaPlante has shouldered the contentious consolidation issue facing Steuben, the lone Washington County town in the union. Its school will close at the end of this school year, sending 100 pupils across the county line to join peers in Gouldsboro and Winter Harbor next year.

He also has shepherded a project to build a new school for the Peninsula Consolidated School District in Winter Harbor, which is expected to be completed in two or three years.

“Consolidation is something that the state is going to see a lot more of,” LaPlante predicted. “We have kind of broken a lot of ground here, but [Maine] is going to see more and more.”

Webster has a lengthy business background that includes working in the finance department at Arthur Anderson, a now-defunct global accounting firm.

He also spent 10 years as a financial analyst for Hannaford Bros. before moving into the private sector as a small-business owner for another 10 years.

In 2001, he decided to go back to school and get a master’s in education and has since been in school administration for the last few years at a private school in southern Maine.

“A lot in the first few months will just be listening and learning,” he said of his new position. “There is a lot of history here and I’ll need to build the community’s confidence.”