Nominations sought for RSU 50 board

    STACYVILLE, Maine — Formation of the new RSU 50 is moving forward and voters will soon be asked to vote for representatives on the newly created school board.
SAD 25 (Stacyville, Patten, Sherman and Mount Chase); CSD 9 (Island Falls, Dyer Brook, Oakfield, Merrill, Smyrna and Crystal) and the towns of Hersey and Moro Plantation will join forces on July 1 as RSU 50.
    On June 30, the school boards and committees for CSD 9, SAD 25, Moro and Hersey will cease to exist.
“There should be very little change to the schools or the schedule for the first year,” Comeau said.
A joint meeting between the four entities was held on March 8. At that meeting, John Doe, SAD 25’s current superintendent, and Terry Comeau, CSD 9 superintendent, were elected as co-interim secretaries to get the RSU 50 board up and running.
Nomination papers are currently available for anyone interested in serving on the new RSU 50 board. Those papers are available at the superintendent’s offices, not the town offices. Nomination papers must be returned by Monday, March 28 to the superintendent’s offices, Comeau said.
Residents will go to the polls in a referendum election on May 12 in each of the corresponding towns. Once the election is complete, the state Board of Education will notify the successful candidates as to when and where the first RSU 50 board meeting will be held. Comeau said he anticipated that meeting to take place around May 18.
The new RSU will have a combined student population of 824 students, according to the state Department of Education website.
Sixteen seats are up for grabs on the new RSU 50 board. The governing body will be made up of directors elected from each member municipality in the RSU. According to the plan, there will be 16 directors with two each from Island Falls, Oakfield, Patten and Sherman and one director each from Hersey, Moro Plantation, Crystal, Dyer Brook, Merrill, Smyrna, Mount Chase and Stacyville.
Each board member will be elected to serve a three-year term, except that the initial terms of the members of the initial RSU Board shall be staggered so that six of the directors serve three 3-year terms, five of the initial directors serve two 2-year terms and five of the initial directors serve a 1-year term. The new board will also have a weighted vote system in order to provide the most equity between the two school districts.
Under the new RSU, a unified collective bargaining agreement must be made for unionized employees.
“The first things the new board will need to do is find a superintendent and get a budget together,” Comeau said. “We are already working on a budget right now and are trying to do as much of the background work we can do as possible to ease the transition.”
Doe has previously stated that he was not interested in pursuing the RSU superintendent position. Comeau said he has not made a final decision on whether he would be interested in the job. The central office for RSU 50 will be located at the current Southern Aroostook Superintendent’s Office in Dyer Brook.
For more information on nomination papers, call Doe at 365-4272 or Comeau at 757-8223.