BANGOR – Longtime Bangor School Committee Chairwoman Martha Newman announced Tuesday she won’t seek the leadership post on the panel again after finishing her current one-year term.

Newman’s written statement, sent to the Bangor Daily News, came in response to what the 17-year chairwoman called the “tearing and divisiveness” in the school system caused by ongoing controversy over the resignation of a newly elected school committee member. The situation led to Newman’s leadership being publicly questioned.

“Having been elected to serve as school committee chairman this year, I will do so. I will not serve as chairman again,” Newman wrote. Her letter made no reference to her future as a regular member of the school board, on which she has served since 1982. She was elected on Nov. 7 to another three-year term.

In a brief telephone interview Tuesday night, however, Newman said she would “probably not” seek re-election to another three-year term after this one is up.

“I don’t think so. I think it’s a great job. I’m delighted with the academic excellence we have achieved, but by then it will be 27 years” of service to the school department, she said.

Newman’s announcement came after the City Council’s finance committee opted Monday night to take no action with regard to the resignation of school committee member-elect Dan Tremble, winner in a three-way race for two committee openings on Nov. 7.

During the meeting, chaired by Councilor Richard Stone, committee members were faced with making a decision whether they wanted to review the circumstances surrounding the election flap and if so, what the scope of that investigation would be.

Councilor Annie Allen’s motion that a probe be conducted, preferably by an impartial person or panel, fizzled for lack of a second.

“I don’t know where we’d find people impartial enough to serve,” Councilor Peter D’Errico said of the recent controversy.

“I suspect the vast majority of citizens want us to set it right, [but] I’m not convinced that a special review is going to solve any of those issues,” Stone said.

A former city councilor who also served a term as mayor, Tremble resigned from his school committee post Nov. 16, one day after Bangor School Superintendent Robert Ervin informed him that under state law, he could not serve on the seven-member panel while his wife, Molly Tremble, was employed by the school department.

She was hired in early September as an education technician at Fairmount School, where she staffs the computer room.

Afterward, both Ervin and Tremble said they were unaware of the state law until it was too late to do anything about it.

Ervin said he learned about it after the election but before Tremble was sworn in as a school committee member.

Tremble said he thought he was free to serve because another school committee member had a daughter and son-in-law employed by the school department, which is not prohibited by state law.

The incident raised eyebrows around the community and prompted two residents to register a formal complaint over how Ervin handled the conflict.

Part of the problem mentioned by Stone and other councilors who weighed in on the matter Monday was that such a review would require the full cooperation of school officials, if it were to be successful.

During a special meeting last month, however, school committee members voted 4-2 not to conduct an investigation of their own.

More recently, Ervin told school committee members he would develop a draft policy on conflict of interest and likely on nepotism. He hoped to have the policy ready for review during the school committee’s next meeting, set for Dec. 13.

Though they scrapped a review, the finance committee members agreed that it made sense to provide information about eligibility requirements to potential candidates for school committee and City Council posts.

Tremble also thought a candidates guide would be helpful but said that would not address residents’ concerns about the election and the desire some voters have for a leadership change on the school committee.

“The information package is a good idea, but I think by now everyone who is breathing knows the rules,” Tremble said.

“But people are still very upset about what happened and why it happened,” Tremble said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “People still want to know why the election results were invalidated.”

While Tremble lauded Newman’s contributions to making Bangor’s schools some of the best in Maine, he said her stepping down from the chair next fall was a “welcome development” that was “long overdue.” He also thought her action missed the point.

“People’s focus now, I think, is not on her tenure as chair” but rather on the circumstances that surrounded the election, he said.

“They’re not targeting Martha,” he said. “They want answers. People have heard the explanation [given by Ervin], but they think it’s a convenient answer.”

In announcing her intentions regarding the chairmanship, Newman wrote:

“In my time on the Bangor School Committee, I have had only one priority, academic excellence for all students. That goal has guided my work in every position I have held on the School Committee, including serving as chairman,” Newman wrote in a letter submitted Tuesday to the editor of the Bangor Daily News.

“The current controversy is causing tearing and divisiveness in the school system. Ending this conflict spares the names and careers of good people who are potential casualties if this conflict continues. My every instinct is to protect those good people and the institution,” she wrote.