WATERVILLE $ Residents on Tuesday learned just how potentially complicated a regional school plan for Waterville, Winslow and Vassalboro can be.

At the first of three public hearings held on the proposed Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS) plan for the three school systems, Mayor Paul R. LePage asked a question for which no one really had a clear answer.

Under the proposed plan, the communities would retain their own school boards, but a larger AOS board would oversee a central or administrative office for all three. Only one superintendent would be hired for all three communities.

The three school systems would share special education, transportation, business and other functions, and union contracts ultimately would be brought into alignment.

Vassalboro would continue to have school choice, meaning residents would decide where to send secondary students to high school since that town has no high school.

Communities such as Waterville and Winslow, which have their own high schools, currently may not send their students to another school unless superintendents from both school systems decide it's in the student's best interest to do so.

"What happens if it's the same superintendent?" LePage asked.

Waterville Schools Superintendent Eric Haley was momentarily stumped.

"You mean, could a superintendent make an agreement with themselves?" he said.

It took School Union 52 Superintendent Hugh Riordan less than a second to answer the question.

"They do it all the time," he said.

School Union 52 includes Winslow, Vassalboro and China, and as superintendent of all three communities, he alone deals with a school choice issue when a student needs to attend another school.

But no one at the public hearing, held in the media center at Waterville Senior High School, had an answer about how one superintendent would deal with a school choice in an AOS.

Waterville faces a needed $15 renovation to its high school. What if the Waterville Board of Education decided not to renovate it?

Board Chairman Lee Cabana agreed the question was one no one had considered.

"That's a new thought $ the idea that we would close this place and send everybody to Winslow so we wouldn't have to pay for a new school or school repair," Cabana said.

"They (Winslow) don't have the room and the AOS can't compel Winslow to build a new school. That's an interesting supposition, that the superintendent would have to find a place for 630 students."

About 40 people, including school and city officials, attended Tuesday's session.
Voters will decide on the plan Jan. 13. The plan also must be approved by the state Department of Education.

Amy Calder $ 861-9247
acalder@centralmaine.com