The task force charged with exploring an alternative structure for six towns' schools merging into one district under the state's school district consolidation law developed a preliminary structure at its first meeting Wednesday night.

The proposed district merger would serve students from Fayette, Manchester, Mount Vernon, Readfield, Wayne and Winthrop. The task force formed earlier this month after an August vote when six of the towns' seven school boards voted in favor of exploring the alternative district structure.

Some members of the committee planning the district merger have favored the alternative structure -- an option for consolidating districts allowed by legislation passed in April -- as a way to prevent a larger regional school board from having the power to close a small town's elementary school.

Under plans for the alternative structure developed Wednesday, committee member Terri Watson said, local elementary school boards would have two functions: developing elementary school budgets and initiating a school's closure. After local approval of an elementary budget, the budget would become part of a larger regional school district's budget.

The plans are preliminary, Watson said, and state Department of Education officials have yet to review them.

"What we're proposing is something different from any other (alternative district structure)," said Watson, of Manchester. "We're trying to be creative."

As the task force forms plans for the alternative structure, a merger planning committee is still at work on plans for the conventional regional school unit structure most consolidating districts in Maine are adopting.