HOWLAND – Ann Bridge will return as SAD 31’s interim superintendent to run the school system and marshal plans to build a new secondary school through the state approval process.

The board of directors ended a brief executive session and voted unanimously Friday to pay Bridge $2,000 a week until the new grade 7-12 school gets concept approval from Maine Department of Education officials or through the first half of September, board Chairman John M. Neel said.

The $8.9 million school is on track for state education approval and an opening in September 2007.

Bridge wanted a short-term commitment and the board was obliging, Neel said.

“Either we will look for another interim superintendent [in September] or we will have concluded our search for a new superintendent by then,” Neel said Friday.

Bridge is from Parkman and has 29 years experience. She will replace William Ziemer, who abruptly resigned his job Wednesday, effective Friday.

Bridge first replaced Ziemer from Oct. 4 to Dec. 29 last year, when 700 residents signed a petition asking the Maine Department of Education to determine his fitness.

Bridge’s experience with SAD 31 makes her a perfect replacement for Ziemer, Neel said.

“She is available. She can start immediately,” Neel said, “and it’s good for the staff because they know her. She is the right person at the right time.”

State investigators lacked grounds to revoke Ziemer’s superintendent’s certificate, but found that political infighting and communications breakdowns helped force them to place SAD 31 on probation.

More recently, state officials were investigating why an industrial arts shop at Penobscot Valley High School they ordered closed in late September was used from early November to May.

Friday, the board also voted to assign Director Bruce Hallett to work with school architect Steve Rich to see whether an industrial arts classroom within the closed wing can be reopened.

The classroom is not part of the 1952 wing ordered closed by the state, and it has received almost $13,000 in improvements to make it useable, Hallett said.

He called the state order closing the classroom “strictly a misinformation problem and it could be cleaned up, if we went about it right.

“We need that classroom to teach industrial arts,” Hallett said. “I think we just have to have a different attitude. Not the attitude that we had before.”

The board also voted to take a $300,000 short-term loan to plug a hole in its cash flow partially caused by the town of Lowell’s decision to withdraw next year.

The Lowell move forced school staff to reconfigure the assessments and delayed its billing to its member communities.

Most of those bills went out Friday, said Babette Nesin, the school system’s bookkeeper.

Without the vote, SAD 31 would probably bounce about $12,000 in payroll checks on Monday, she said.

The assessments and payments from the state, which don’t usually come in July, will cover the loan. The assessments will probably be in by the end of the month, Nesin said.