ETNA – After weeks of deadlocked votes, the SAD 38 board of directors decided Monday night to ask residents whether the district should contract with SAD 48 for secondary education, and whether that contract should include a caveat for tuition waivers.

On June 10, the date of state primary elections, residents from Etna and Dixmont will see two local questions included on the ballot. The first will be a binding vote, asking residents whether SAD 38 directors should enter into a contract with SAD 48 to send secondary students to Nokomis Regional High School in Newport, which they now do.

The second question will ask whether townspeople support maintaining the current tuition-waiver process, which allows students to attend a high school other than Nokomis with permission from the board. The results to the second question would simply be advisory. The directors then would vote officially on the tuition waivers at a future meeting.

After weeks of 3-3 split votes on whether to keep tuition waivers as part of a negotiated contract with SAD 48, the board called a special meeting Monday night and asked Dick Spencer of Drummond, Woodsum & MacMahon, the district’s legal counsel, to attend.

The debate over tuition waivers began in discussions about the state’s mandated school reorganization. SAD 38 and SAD 48 have submitted preliminary plans to consolidate under the law and use Nokomis as the Regional School Unit’s high school. SAD 48 serves Newport, Palmyra, Corinna, Hartland, Plymouth and St. Albans.

The last written contact between SAD 38 and SAD 48 expired in 2004, said Superintendent John Backus. Despite an affirmative referendum vote in 2002 to renew the contract, the SAD 38 board neglected to sign off on the updated agreement.

Without a contract, Spencer said, the district had a case for school choice, but receiving districts such as SAD 48 have no incentive to consolidate. SAD 38 must consolidate to avoid financial penalties, but SAD 38 board Chairman Phil Dolan said it is unlikely that SAD 48 will agree to merge if a tuition waiver clause exists. It is an issue of finances and fairness, Dolan said. If the districts become one, then residents in SAD 48 towns will not want to pay for Etna and Dixmont students to attend other schools when the option is not extended to their children.

Spencer advised that the district could enter into a contract with SAD 48, to ensure secondary education for SAD 38 students, and then negotiate the tuition waivers with the consolidation regional planning committee.