Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — Members of the Limestone community met on Thursday, Jan. 8 to discuss the Limestone Community School’s (LCS) options regarding the mandatory Regional School Unit (RSU) plan.
Aroostook Republican Photo/Natalie Bazinet
Mary Margaret, freshman, Monique Waugh, junior, and Justin Thompson, sophomore, attended the Limestone Community School meeting that was held on Jan. 8.
The meeting was held in the cafeteria to accommodate the discussion based objective of the meeting.
Individuals attended the meeting for various reasons:
“I’d like to see the school stay open,” said Norman Johndro, “I’d hate to see our children traveled to Caribou or Fort Fairfield, especially during the winter when the roads are bad.”
“It’s my understanding that we will be discussing the possibilities of converting the school into a private academy, and we’re also going to talk about the possibility of transferring this building over to the Maine School of Science and Mathematics; whether or not that’s what they’re going to do, I know that there are some issues and I’m anxious to find out more because we have a vote coming up at the end of the month,” said Adam Kohler, who attended the meeting with his wife, Karen, “I’d like to see a well thought out plan or plans, and I’d like to see some people in the audience that are excited about the possibilities rather than focusing on the negatives.”
During the meeting, Michael McCormick, CPE of McCormick Facilities Management Consultants, and Frank McElwain, superintendent, presented possible options to members of the Limestone community regarding the future of their school.
The options presented to those in attendance for a half hour of discussion with others at their table included Option A, implementing a variety of efficiency actions; Option B, which includes Option A plus tuitioning grade 9 to 12 to another school; Option C, to sell LCS for $8,000,000 and invest in a new facility; Option D, sell LCS for some amount, tuition all students, and use proceeds to reduce taxes; Option E, deed LCS to the state of Maine for MSSM in exchange for free rent; Option F, create Limestone Academy, a private school to operate both LCS and MSSM.
McCormick did make one clarification about the options during the meeting:
“The efficiency option under Option A does have to do with being more energy efficient, but it’s also making the building more efficient both programmatically and administratively,” he explained.
After the half hour of discussion, community members had the opportunity to present ideas that their table discussed.
“I think that as a town, we need to get together, we need to pay our taxes, we need to raise our taxes, and we need to keep our kids going to our school,” said one community member, “I don’t want to send my kids to Caribou or anywhere else; I was brought up here, and I like the Limestone School system. I think we should come up with a plan to keep this school alive and go with that because if we go with the RSU, we’re going to get bamboozled.”
Not all participants in the discussion, however, discouraged tuitioning students.
“As many of you know,” said one participant, “a lot of the programs have been cut in the school, so we should tuition them out to other schools and give them more options across the board academically and provide them with a better education.”
The most prominent theme throughout the discussion was the effect that changes will have on our students.
“I’m more concerned with our kids education than tax dollars or anything else,” said Scott King, “whatever option we move forward with, we need to keep our kids futures in mind foremost.”
Whereas the majority of those who attending the meeting were parents and concerned citizens, a few LCS students were present at the meeting.
“We want them to know that we care what happens to our school,” said Monique Waugh, a junior at LCS, “I want to graduate from this school. I’ve been going to it since I was in kindergarten, and I want to be able to come back to it. The way I see it,” she added, “if the school goes, the town goes.”
Some of those who attended the meeting liked the idea of possibly pursuing a closer relationship with the Maine School of Science and Math (MSSM).
“Right now, LCS contracts out a lot of services,” said an LCS staff member, “currently we have our bus drivers contracted through Presque Isle, our superintendent through Caribou, our special ed director through Caribou, the cafeteria is run by MSSM, and there are other things as well; we basically have contracted much of our services and our control already, so it’s not a big leap to go to the magnet school and have the state run it.”
Whereas most in attendance could agree that the students’ education was the highest priority, it seemed that few could agree on a way to meet their educational needs.
The RSU vote is on January 27.
