I believe the current Charter which governs the Boothbay/Boothbay Harbor CSD (Consolidated School District) schools is outmoded, and needs to be repealed and replaced. The Charter is actually a “Private and Special Law” of the state of Maine. It can be repealed by an act of the Legislature. There are two features of the current charter that cause problems; the first is the woefully inadequate cap on building capital reserve funds to keep the schools in good repair. The second is the division of school management into two groups; the Trustees, and the School Committee. The best way to address these issues is to repeal the current Charter and place our schools under the management of the general laws of Maine, under which every other school district in Maine now exist.

Before that happens, we need to have a community-wide discussion and then a vote on whether or not we want to instruct Representative Holly Stover or Senator Dana Dow to introduce a bill to repeal. The selectboards of both towns in the CSD need to initiate this process, which, if the boards subsequently agree, would result in a vote by the citizens of both towns, presumably this coming spring.

What would those general laws allow or require that would be different from the current Charter? There are two routes to go, and each one has different results.

The first route would be to repeal the Charter but grandfather in the CSD structure. If we were to do that, we should, as Maine law allows, combine the roles of Trustees and School Committee into one new combined committee. It appears to me that this would also require a specific additional vote by the citizens on whether to combine the duties of the Trustees and the School Committee into one new committee. Under CSD law, there would be equal membership from both Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor on such a committee, despite our population differences. That’s how the CSD law is written. So, to get to this unified committee, we would first have to repeal the Charter, and then in a separate question, decide whether, under the general laws of Maine, we want to unify the duties of the two existing CSD governing bodies into a single body. I would definitely hope that we keep the CSD structure only if we also vote to combine the two committees.

The second route would be to reorganize the CSD as a Regional School Unit (RSU). The major difference between an RSU and the CSD is there is just one School Committee from the outset (i.e. no need to have a second vote to combine two committee) and representation on the RSU board would be governed by the “one person, one vote” principal. This would mean, as an example, that if one of the two communities has a majority of the voters, then it would have a majority on the RSU Committee. So, just for example, if there were a three to two relationship in populations, then there would be a three to two membership ratio on the RSU board. The latter would be a major change over the current situation, where both communities have equal membership. My sense is that this option could lead to unnecessary and possibly divisive debate about power sharing.

For those readers who want to research this further, here’s a link to the current law governing CSDs: http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/20-A/title20-Ach105sec0.html There’s not much law there, since CSDs are no longer being formed; but we can grandfather in our current CSD. Here’s a link to forming an RSU, with further links to RSU law: https://www.maine.gov/doe/schools/structure/forming

It seems to me that the best route for us is to grandfather in the CSD structure, but to take advantage of the provision in the CSD law that allows us to combine the duties of the Trustees and the School Committee into one new unified committee. But all of this takes further discussion in our communities to get the sense of what people want to do, and then action by the selectboards to put any action items onto the town warrants for annual town meetings. I hope we get this going in time for town meeting votes this coming spring.