SAD 70 exploring union with SAD 14

District makes Adequate Yearly Progress
By Joseph Cyr
Staff Writer
    HODGDON — Faced with fewer and fewer choices in its efforts to consolidate with another school district, the SAD 70 school board reached out to the Danforth school system Tuesday, Oct. 12 in hopes of uniting.
    SAD 70 agreed to send a letter of intent to the Department of Education for plans to form an Alternative Organizational Structure with SAD 14 (Danforth). The board was left with few choices in the consolidation process as neighboring SAD 29 opted to pull out of its talks with SAD 70 at its Oct. 4 meeting, ending a nine-month collaboration between the two districts. For SAD 29, a merger was not necessary, as the state had previously ruled the district was large enough, based on enrollment figures, to be a stand-alone Regional School Unit.
    “I received a phone call from Richard Cote [superintendent at SAD 14], who expressed interest in forming an AOS [Alternative Organizational Structure] with us,” Superintendent Bob McDaniel said. “If we are interested, we will need to send a letter of intent to the state.”
    Once the two districts get approval form the state, discussions will begin on how the AOS will be formed. A formal vote by both school boards would be required and then a public referendum vote would need to follow after that.
    If the district can put a plan into place and get it out to a referendum vote before Jan. 31, SAD 70 will not be penalized by the state as being a non-conforming school. If the plan and successful vote does not transpire before Jan. 31, the district may still be penalized in next year’s budget, according to McDaniel.
    By forming an AOS, the two districts would consolidate central offices; meaning just one superintendent would govern both districts, resulting in some cost savings for both districts.
    SAD 70 was penalized $93,000 in last year’s budget for not conforming to the state’s consolidation wishes. That penalty is expected to rise to at least $96,000 in the next budget, but could be even higher.
    Based on the 2006 attendance figures, an AOS between SAD 70 and SAD 14 would include 738 total students between the two school districts, which should be enough to satisfy the state’s merger mandate. McDaniel said the district would know by the time it sent its letter of intent.
    “It will be a refreshing change for us to send out school board people down to meet with Danforth and have a group that is actually willing to sit down and work with us,” board member Joel Oliver said.
    Board member Tracy Rockwell was the lone member to vote against sending a Letter of Intent. Rockwell said her “no” vote was made, in part, on the principle of the subject.
    “I’m wondering if we should start talking about maybe tuitioning our students elsewhere,” she said.
    Board member Margaret Scott added, while she was in favor of the plan to go with Danforth, she was also deeply disappointed that a plan was not able to be worked out with SAD 29.
    “I don’t hold any grudges, but I think it’s just really sad,” Scott said. “We are five miles apart and we can’t work together. It’s extremely sad that we now have to look at a school that’s so much farther away. Overall, for our kids, it’s sad we couldn’t pull together as a team and have a great, combined school district.”
    Danforth, in comparison to SAD 29, is about 30 miles away from SAD 70s schools.
Meeting AYP
    The school board also received some good news from Hodgdon High School Principal Clark Rafford and Mill Pond Elementary School Principal Loreen Wiley that both schools were now making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) based on SAT and NECAP scores.
    “Our No. 1 goal was to make AYP, but it is not just AYP,” Rafford said. “It’s nice to make AYP, but it’s even more important to see students succeed in the classroom. We want to see everyone be successful in all the subjects. There is work we still have to do and we will continue to do that.”
    Rafford presented the board with a rough draft of a strategic plan he hopes to implement over the next few years to continue the progress being made by students.
    In her presentation, Wiley informed the board that the elementary school was no longer on “monitor status” for its subgroups in AYP.
    “This week, we start NECAP testing again, so it was timely in receiving this information,” Wiley said. “We are challenging each student to try and improve their own scores.”
Parent concern
    During the public comment portion of the meeting, parent Tim McAfee addressed the board on his concerns over the district’s policies on sending students on school trips.
    Speaking with the Houlton Pioneer Times on Wednesday, McAfee said the district has twice sent his child on a field trip without receiving a permission slip from the school.
    “The school decided to takes kids in fifth to eighth grade to a play in Houlton back in the spring,” he said. “The play was called ‘The Secret Lives of Girls,’ which was about bullying. It also brought up some topics, such as ‘cutting’ that I don’t think my fifth-grader needed to know about at this point.”
    McAfee said at that time, he went to school and asked administrators why he did not receive a permission slip for the play and was told that one was not necessary when taking students on “curriculum-related field trips.”
    “I researched the policy and that was exactly as it is spelled out, but I asked the school to please allow me the opportunity to give you, the school, permission to take my kid off school grounds,” he said.
    McAfee said he felt that matter was resolved to his satisfaction, but then was surprised to see a memo sent home with his child about a field trip planned for Oct. 1 to Goughan Farms in Caribou to visit a corn maze. That trip was later changed to a field trip to the Houlton Temple Theater due to inclement weather.
    “My issue with the board is they don’t have right to take my child wherever they want,” he said. “They need to ask me for my permission.”
    Both Wiley and McDaniel said the matter has already been addressed and that the district would now send permission slips home to parents for all field trips.
    In other agenda items, the board:
    • Agreed to place plaques inside the baseball and softball dugouts, once they are built, with the names of SAD 70 students who died prior to graduation.
    • Approved Jessica Saunders for a middle school girls basketball coaching position and Sean Molloy for the junior varsity boys basketball coaching position.
    • Accepted the resignation of Trevor Parent as a high school physical education teacher. Parent resigned to take a job at the University of Maine at Presque Isle.
    • Learned from Rafford that the high school’s request to the Maine Principals’ Association to reconsider Hodgdon’s designation as a Class C school was denied by the board. The Hawks will continue to compete in Class C for the remainder of the academic year and move back to Class D in the fall of 2011.
    The next regular meeting of the SAD 70 school board is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 8 at 7 p.m.