Bucksport lacks consolidation partner

BUCKSPORT – The Bucksport area towns, unable to find partners in surrounding towns to form a regional school unit, will be a “doughnut hole” school district under the state’s new consolidation law.

Bucksport, along with the towns of Orland and the SAD 18 towns of Verona Island and Prospect, had previously agreed to work as a unit to seek other partners to form an RSU of at least 2,500 students, as required by the law. But towns to the north and south of the region looked in other directions, leaving those four towns surrounded by other proposed RSUs.

With the state deadline for submitting a letter of intent set for today, the Bucksport School Committee on Wednesday voted to propose the four-town RSU which would serve approximately 1,300 students.

“We were left alone, and that’s what the board voted,” Superintendent Judith Lucarelli said Thursday.

Even though the towns were unable to link with others to form a larger unit, the proposed RSU makes sense, Lucarelli said. As superintendent, she already is responsible for the three school districts in those towns. Verona Island and Prospect do not operate their own school buildings and, as SAD 18, have long sent all their students to Bucksport schools. Orland runs its own kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school but recently signed an agreement by which Bucksport provides administrative services for that school. Also, 75 percent of Orland’s graduating pupils attend Bucksport High School.

“It’s a nice match,” she said. “We already have a good working relationship and common educational priorities. And it’s the same kids.”

The plan should work well for the four towns and three school systems, without any disruption in the educational programs, according to Lucarelli.

“We’ve tried to do this in a way that would minimize the impact on the kids,” she said. “Here, the educational programs will continue and there won’t be any disruption in the education of the kids.”

Lucarelli saw no particular reasons why other communities had rejected Bucksport as a potential partner in an RSU, except that most of the school districts looked to partners where some connection already existed.

“We were all trying to look at what makes sense,” she said. “They were looking toward where they already were connected.”

One potential partner, the Searsport area, already has close community ties with Belfast. Dedham already receives administrative services from Brewer. SAD 63, which includes Holden, Eddington and Clifton, is linked with the Bangor area.

A partnership that initially looked promising involved linking the Bucksport area with the schools on the Blue Hill Peninsula in school unions 93 and 76. Representatives in those towns raised some concerns over the financial implications of such an RSU, and only one of the eight towns in those unions included Bucksport in its letter of intent.

The financial breakdown for that pairing from the state – which, according to Lucarelli, arrived last Friday, just one week before the state’s own deadline – showed that their fears were justified.

“The numbers were all over the place,” Lucarelli said. “Six of those towns are minimum receiving towns [in terms of state subsidy]. We’re not. There were big swings. One town would save a million dollars; another would lose $500,000 more. When the numbers are so skewed, you don’t even get a chance to talk about educational programs.”

The Bucksport School Committee has documented its efforts to find a partner and will await word from state education officials on whether its plan will be accepted. The education commissioner is supposed to report to the schools by Sept. 14. Lucarelli said a meeting of the regional planning committee will be scheduled sometime in the week after that.