Katahdin towns wary of neighbor Millinocket panel favors proposal to combine Union 113 schools

EAST MILLINOCKET – It isn’t dead, but a proposal combining Millinocket schools with three other Katahdin towns’ schools ahead of state consolidation plans met with some stony disapproval Wednesday – and Millinocket snobbery seems partly to blame.

The Millinocket School Committee supports enthusiastically Superintendent Sara Alberts tentative, very rough-draft plan to consolidate Millinocket school populations with students from East Millinocket, Medway and Woodville, but other Union 113 communities do not, representatives said.

“It’s a big step to lose your high school,” Union 113 board member Steve Fleming of Woodville said during a meeting at Schenck High School on Wednesday night. “There are other things you lose when you close a high school.”

Under Alberts’ plan, Granite Street School of Millinocket and Opal Myrick Elementary School would close. Medway Middle School would house pre-kindergarten to grade three; Schenck High School, grades four to eight; and, with extensive barriers between them, kindergarten to grade three and grades nine to 12 at Stearns High School in Millinocket.

Millinocket officials said Schenck could house high school students while Stearns takes grades four to eight, but the dispute seemed more fundamental.

Except for acting East Millinocket School Committee Chairman Gary Morin, no Medway, Woodville and East Millinocket official spoke for consolidating with Millinocket. They said they found no will to send students to the Magic City among their residents.

“We are just not getting a push to go toward Millinocket,” Medway board member Greg Stanley said.

Board member Mary Tompkins of Woodville preferred sending students to SAD 67 – schools in Chester, Lincoln and Mattawamkeag – because Lincoln treats outsiders better than does Millinocket.

“When we go to Lincoln, we don’t get booed,” Tompkins said after the meeting, recalling how Millinocket students booed the entry of students in her children’s class during a recent common event. “It was that way when I was in high school.

“I don’t have anything against Millinocket, really,” she added. “I just wish they were less arrogant.”

“Millinocket first” is an occasional theme in Millinocket, which has about 5,200 residents compared with the other towns having fewer than 2,000 each. In other efforts to consolidate government services, economic development and schools, some Millinocket leaders have said their town should be the cultural and economic center of Katahdin because it’s the biggest.

The other towns don’t agree.

“It would be a lot easier to have [consolidation] in East Millinocket because that’s the most centralized location,” Tompkins said. “And my daughter said she wants to go to Schenck.”

Millinocket School Committee Chairman Thomas Malcolm said that the other towns should not have waited this long to start publicly setting a direction or critiquing Alberts’ plan. The statewide consolidation, which involves creating a regional school unit including the Katahdin region and about 25 other towns, might greatly diminish local power over local schools. That plan is due by summer.