Whiting, Cutler, Machiasport set to form new school union

The Maine commissioner of education has given the communities of Cutler, Machiasport and Whiting permission to form a new school union. Susan Gendron, in a letter to MSAD 77 dated March 6, states that she has approved its dissolution agreement, which will become effective on July 1 of this year. If voters approve the separate school budgets being made up by the trio of Washington County communities, and if the three school board members from each town vote to do so, School Union 134 will be formed.

"Financially, this won't make much of a difference to the communities," says May Bouchard, superintendent of MSAD 77, which consists of Cutler, Machiasport and Whiting. "But whatever the taxpayers are raising locally will now go to their own schools. The communities here have been wanting this for quite awhile."

Bouchard points out that, when Machiasport and Whiting had made previous attempts to leave MSAD 77, their efforts had not met with success. "Now we have a commissioner of education who gave Whiting permission to form a [dissolution] committee."

The 12-member group representing all three communities met from September to early November, in order to meet the November 7 deadline, and Bouchard says, "Everything was very friendly. All motions, except one, were unanimous. I can't even remember what that motion was C just that one person objected."

Laura Pierce of Whiting, chairman of the MSAD 77 dissolution committee, says its work is not finished. "There a few details left. We need to finish working on the transportation issue. We have a plan that the union will run the busing, but we've been advised to have another plan in place if, after one year, that doesn't work out."

"We also have to work out how bills are to paid. Should the union generate the checks and drive them to the towns to be signed? Who would sign them? We also need to talk about sports. Do individual towns want to form their own teams or form teams as a union?" she adds. "What about eighth grade graduations? In the MSAD, graduation is held jointly at Washington Academy. But in unions, generally, each town has its own graduation."

Pierce observes, "There are a lot of little details. I don't know, personally, if the dissolution committee even needs to make decision about issues like the eighth grade graduation."

Both Bouchard and Pierce credit East Machias' decision to leave MSAD 77 one year ago as assisting the other communities in that school district as to how to proceed. "We have some familiarity with what will happen," says Pierce.

The dissolution committee will be meeting at least three more times, March 28, April 11 and May 9, all at the Washington Academy library at 6 p.m. Other members of the group are: representing Cutler, Brandon Cates, Nora Jordan, Diana Markley and Linda Throckmorton; representing Machiasport, Philip Rose, Rose Williams, Helen Walsh and Jean Totman; and representing Whiting, Pierce, Wanda Fitzsimmons, Steve Pressley and Carrie Crosby.

Hearings on each community's school budget will be held in mid-June, and the votes will be held at a special town meeting in June.

Within its school administrative district and following the withdrawal of East Machias, Machiasport has control of the weighted system of voting (53%), much more than Whiting (24%) and Cutler (23%). As a school union, each town will have its own school budget and its own school board of three or more members. There will be meetings, at least annually, of a union board made up of representation from each town and subjected to weighted voting. This board will only deal with issues of shared services.