The legislation comes with penalties for school units that do not consolidate in a way deemed suitable by the state. Union 60 superintendent Heather Perry said she is unclear on the impact of some of the penalties should Greenville and its surrounding towns decide to go in their own direction.

Perry said she hopes to hear more specifics on those penalties when Dept. of Education officials present the law and its implications during a meeting on Wednesday, June 27, at 7 p.m. at Dexter Regional High School. The meeting is part of a series of statewide presentations on the consolidation law.

The plan does eliminate school unions, so one way or another, the Greenville area school system will take on a different look when the new plan takes effect, now slated for July 1, 2008.

Perry, with the new law in hand, will now begin to round out the options facing each of the towns in the union in order to move forward with the newest and most complete information. Each of the towns in Union 60 will have to individually decide how it wants to proceed, Perry said, unlike in an SAD, where a districtwide decision will be made.

Union 60, thanks to a regional services grant from the state, has been investigating the possibility of teaming with SAD 13 in Bingham and SAD 12 in Jackman for some time. The schools will share a foreign language teacher in the 2007-08 school year.

More recently, SADs 74 (North Anson) and 59 (Madison) have joined the discussion, and Perry said those talks will continue. Greenville, Beaver Cove and Shirley are all involved in those discussions, and Kingsbury may be interested in joining, Perry said. Willimantic is a unique case and has not yet decided how it will move forward, she said. School units around the state have until August 31 to submit a letter to the Dept. of Education identifying their partners in consolidation.

While the legislation does not explicitly call for the closing of schools, officials in many small towns are worried that small schools would become budget cut victims in large district.

Because the towns involved in the consolidation discussions with Union 60 are similar in size and philosophy to those in the Greenville area, Perry said Greenville would have enough sway in that kind of configuration.

"Due to the individual municipalities that are found within that region, and to the geographic nature of that region, I feel pretty secure that the Greenville schools themselves would not be in danger of closing," she said.
"This content originally appeared as a copyrighted article in the Tuesday, June 19, 2007 edition of the Moosehead Messenger and is used here with permission."