Reorganization Planning Committee Meeting
23 July 2008 DRAFT Minutes
Present: Facilitator Bill Ferm Chair Gail Marshall Vice-Chair Brian Hubbell
Bar Harbor: Paul Murphy, Bob Garland Mount Desert: Laurel Robbins, Patrick Smallidge
Southwest Harbor: Skip, Strong, Amy Young, Kristin Hutchins Swan’s Island: Tammy Tripler
Tremont: Amy Murphy Trenton: Judy Sproule
Others in attendance: Rob Liebow, Patrick Barter, Nancy Thurlow, Kelley Sanborn, George Peckham, Rick Savage, and Elsie Flemings
Commencement of Meeting
Gail Marshall called the meeting to order at 7:03 p.m.
Review of Draft Minutes from 2 July 2008
MOVED by Laurel Robbins, seconded by Skip Strong and unanimously voted to approve the minutes of
2 July 2008, as written.
Public Comment
None
Work session on draft inter-local agreement and draft reorganization plan
Gail Marshall – Reviewed the draft inter-local agreement section by section. First section describes who is part of this agreement. All towns on Mt. Desert Island, Cranberry Isles, Frenchboro, Swan’s Island, Trenton, and MDI High School. Parties to this agreement are the school boards and they are authorized to approve or disapprove this agreement for their communities.
Purpose is to organize an Alternative Organizational Structure. We have labeled this the Mt. Desert Island Regional School System.
Laurel Robbins – The Union structure is basically the AOS?
Gail Marshall – The AOS is replacing the Union.
Gail Marshall – Reviewed the school committee representation. May need a description of how we came up with the number of members from each town. Dick Spencer is saying that Mt. Desert Island Regional School District shall not be separately represented on the AOS school committee. If you had separate representatives for the high school they would have to come from somewhere. He suggested taking one representative from each of the four towns on this island and assigning them to be just high school representatives. Gail’s argument was that that created an environment where some people would come to the meetings just as K-8 members and not K-12 as a whole.
Paul Murphy – The one argument that held weight is that there could be a case in which a community or some communities’ objectives over an issue could be in conflict with the high school’s objectives. It’s entirely possible that something that works well for Bar Harbor or Southwest Harbor might not work well for the high school.
Gail Marshall – In that circumstance, those people that come from Bar Harbor have to struggle to balance the needs of the entire community rather than just be parochial about it.
Patrick Smallidge – It’s fairly obvious from what Mr. Spencer said that our apportionment is fine. However, it says that each town shall choose from its membership representation to the AOS, not some ad hoc group.
Brian Hubbell – The source of that language is the actual language in the Private and Special law that covers representation for the high school, so at least it is consistent.
Patrick Smallidge – We also have to ensure that the AOS and high school have that organized representational structure if it’s part of the Private and Special Act.
Gail Marshall – What do you mean by organized representation?
Patrick Smallidge – There is no given representation say from Bar Harbor to the high school board, say Brian Hubbell and Paul Murphy. It’s just whoever shows up. I think they should be chosen in advance by the boards themselves.
Brian Hubbell – We did talk about our current practice and what we are allowed to do. Dick Spencer’s concern is the way we delegate representatives at the meeting. He thought we were appointing without a proper meeting. I don’t think there is a generic problem with allowing the members of the local boards to be representatives of the high school board. We do need to be rigorous about how that occurs.
A further discussion of how board members would be chosen to vote at the high school level occurred.
Rob Liebow – In section four, we’re checking on “In April of each year…” We think that came from the Private and Special Act, but Nancy is checking that because you won’t have even elected your new representatives at town meeting yet.
Gail Marshall – School Systems of Member Units – describes which schools are going to operate what schools and which schools are covered under this.
Kelley Sanborn – Because we currently have contracts with other Union 92 schools do those need to be reflected in here?
Rob Liebow – That is highlighted for discussion.
Brian Hubbell – We just need to add other tuition contracts that we make.
Rob Liebow - The high school would set up their contracts. We don’t have contracts with the island schools right now. The whole idea of the contract in the beginning was to stipulate some understanding about if the towns were going to contribute the 10% building surcharge extra then they wanted to make sure a, b, and c happened, including not rejecting some of their students. If you were going to ask them for extra money they wanted to know they had a guaranteed period of time their kids could come here. They are five year contracts. The current contract consists of all Union 92 schools.
Brian Hubbell – I would propose to add language that says “accept tuition students in grades 9-12 from Cranberry Isles, Frenchboro, Swan’s Island, Trenton and any other towns which the high school board contracts with.”
Paul Murphy – Schools may accept tuition students and if you choose to accept tuition students you must accept any and all tuition students.
Gail Marshall – I don’t think it makes sense for us to be proposing specific language to add to this document.
I think we should propose specific concepts that need to be added, but we should ask Dick Spencer to use the language that is most appropriate to use.
Rob Liebow – A point of order – April did come from the Private and Special Act.
Bill Ferm – One of the things to take back to Dick is that we need to deal with the ability to add tuition contracts with other schools.
Gail Marshall – Powers, Authority and Responsibilities – Essentially the way the central office is now.
I envision that the AOS board will appoint Rob the administrator for transportation, but the individual schools will still run their own transportation systems. Same is true for most of the other sections.
Patrick Smallidge - Where Rob has to have that title, the problem is down the road. When we’re unelected and Rob has moved on. Without having any concrete statement of intent in relation to that being merely a title, future boards will forget that. Who is going to have the authority to change that title into a reality in terms of running the school transportation systems? Unless it’s stated somewhere, future boards will not know what this means.
Gail Marshall – There was a great deal of discussion in the legislature that this was “administration” and not the whole ball of wax. I would urge us to leave it the way it is because, just as in the future we might deem it appropriate to curb the efforts of the superintendent to take under themselves more and more responsibilities, our trend has been to look for areas in which we can most effectively and efficiently have Rob and other members of the central office do these things for us. It hasn’t been all that many years that we have had a Director of Special Education and Director of Curriculum and those are things that have evolved as the schools have worked closer and closer and more efficiently and effectively. Leaving that flexibility allows for future boards to define that term in a way that works best for them in that point in history. With respect to transportation, I think it would be appropriate for the current AOS board to ask Rob to study and propose whether or not the way we run our transportation system now is the best way to run it.
Patrick Smallidge – One of my concerns is, this is a bill of goods. What you’re saying is this bill of goods is not going to be the same thing four years down the road. What I don’t want to see is a template to create another position unless it’s very clear.
Paul Murphy – I agree with Gail on this. I don’t think it removes the autonomy that any town has. It seems to me before a town would give up its school buses, it would require a vote by the town, at least by it’s school board. It doesn’t happen without money being budgeted by the voters and warrant committee and selectboard of that town making a position permanent.
Tammy Tripler – A document is supposed to be a living, breathing document. Leave it flexible so you have room to change.
Patrick Smallidge – I would like to see a definition of the transportation within this law and an interpretation of that. If it was very vague and a workable thing it didn’t say “you shall have a person that does all this” and lists the duties. I don’t remember a definition of the word and the duties.
Bob Garland – Once the AOS is up and running will it be establishing it’s own bylaws or policies or rules and procedures that will handle some of these issues?
Gail Marshall – Like any other board it will establish policies. Patrick, it is delineated in the AOS law that in order to be an AOS you have to have in the central office a director of transportation, special education, and curriculum for the purposes of administering those programs. If you talk about special education, it’s not requiring that the teachers and people who do the work providing these services be governed by the central office, it’s that there has to be a coordinated system and that coordinator resides in the central office.
It doesn’t mean that any of the autonomy to actually operate and provide those special education services or transportation services is lost, those remain with the local school committees as they do now.
Laurel Robbins – What part of the wording of this do you [Patrick] have a problem with?
Patrick Smallidge – I don’t have a definition of what a transportation director is and what that entails. You’re selling a bill of goods and I don’t want to see these becoming actual jobs that are unnecessary.
Brian Hubbell – The language you’re reading here is the generality that you might find objectionable is a feature of the language we worked hard to preserve. We gave a region more discretion and control of how this is going to be formed. I don’t want us to fight to constrain ourselves in ways we worked hard to free ourselves.
Gail Marshall – The commissioner described that this means that you have an administrator of something in the central office, it’s a limiting factor in terms of the power of the central office, not an expanding factor. Instead of saying transportation shall be controlled by the central office, it’s just the administration of it. It’s not who owns the buses and what the bus runs are going to be. It wasn’t intended to create more power for the central office; it was an attempt to limit the scope of what the central office does.
Rob Liebow – The central office budget will have to be approved by the voters at a separate meeting of the AOS. Then it will have to go to referendum. That was debatable at one point, but that is how it will be.
Rob Liebow – The AOS budget is the first budget that has to be voted on before any other budget.
Judy Sproule – In “e” it mentions “the preceding School Union 98 board”. I think that will need to be changed.
Gail Marshall – With Union 92 splitting up, what part of Union 92, it’s assets and liabilities, what part of all of those items is Trenton going to have to deal with? We’ll have to discuss that.
Rob Liebow – We were just going to talk about the assets left from Union 92. There may be some pot of gold they split up. Our pot of gold stays with the Union 98 central office, but how does Union 92’s get split up?
Brian Hubbell – Trenton school committee will have to deal with that.
Judy Sproule – You’re talking about the Union 98 pot, not the balances that come from each individual town.
Gail Marshall – In section 7 it describes what happens if various communities don’t ratify the plan. What this essentially says is that each of the towns of Bar Harbor, Mt. Desert, Southwest Harbor, and Tremont individually need to approve this agreement for it to go into effect. If the smaller towns and Trenton don’t approve it, it shouldn’t stop the AOS from going forward. The reason for this distinction is that we have told our communities that they will have a chance to vote on this. Dick Spencer argued that if it gets approved by the whole system because we also come together as the CSD board, that it’s the total vote of the whole four towns and we’ve got to do that differently.
Paul Murphy – It doesn’t seem that this document can preclude any of the towns herein from joining together in an inter-local agreement.
Gail Marshall – But what it means is that this particular inter-local agreement wouldn’t go into effect.
Paul Murphy – But it could be the same agreement less one town.
Brian Hubbell – The plan itself cannot go forward if any one of the majority of voters within any of those four towns votes it down. If the reorganization plan is voted down, then the inter-local agreement is moot.
Paul Murphy – There is nothing that precludes three of the four towns from adopting that exact plan and moving forward without the fourth town.
Brian Hubbell – The way it’s written right now that would require another iteration.
Gail Marshall – When we discuss the plan itself, the way it’s temporarily worded is those towns have to come back and try to resolve their differences. I would advocate strongly for that position. It is fundamental to the success of this school system to have each of the four towns on this island participate in that school system. Ultimately, I don’t think one town should be able to bring the whole school system to it’s knees. You have to come back at least once and try to resolve the problems.
Paul Murphy – The plan has no legislative quality to it. That’s not a law that’s enacted by the state legislature or any legal entity within the towns.
Gail Marshall – If the plan is written and the voters are acting on the plan that says if any one of the four towns defeat this plan, all of the towns have to come back together and reach consensus on a new plan, then that is a requirement that will have weight.
Gail Marshall – Section 8 – no discussion.
Rob Liebow - Section 9 – Budget Adoption Procedures. Explained the procedure as discussed previously. If you’re in the town of Bar Harbor, for example, you would have an AOS budget referendum question, an elementary school budget referendum question, and a high school budget referendum question. Trenton has
their K-8 budget referendum question and their AOS budget referendum question. If those things fail in the towns, the AOS is an aggregate of all those that voted on the referendum, but if your individual budget failed then for three years your legislative body decides it’s a foolish process, you have to go back to town meeting, have another referendum, until something finally happens. You could pass an AOS budget, but then if it failed at referendum, what would happen? It might not be as difficult as it appears.
Paul Murphy – The AOS budget is going to appear at town referenda as an aggregate budget and as that town’s share of that aggregate budget.
Rob Liebow – They’re going to vote on it as a collective item and then it will be one variable, one piece of the K-8 budget.
Paul Murphy - Their share will be embedded. If the K-8 budget is rejected, that’s just a dollar amount that is rejected, not the AOS portion that’s rejected.
Rob Liebow – You’re going to have bought the AOS piece once it gets past referendum.
Paul Murphy – No single town can throw off the AOS budget. Let’s say the AOS portion for Bar Harbor is $500,000. And the majority of the AOS towns approve the AOS budget and Bar Harbor says ok, but we disapprove the K-8 budget and approve a budget at $500,000 less, they’re already committed to that $500,000 in the AOS budget and need to find that $500,000 elsewhere in it’s K-8 budget.
Rob Liebw – Section 10 – Cost sharing – This is as close to the Fox formula (the current Union 98 formula) as we could get. Explained the minor differences between the proposed wording and the Fox formula.
Continues to make the small players pay at least 1%.
Brian Hubbell – The 1% is a practical minimum. It’s a ˝ % which is the absolute minimum and the other
˝ % is the least likely amount that is going to be added because of the different components.
George Peckham – This applies only to K-8?
Rob Liebow – No, this applies to the central office budget for the K-12 system for who is in the K-12 system. It is the same as the Union 98 budget, just another name for it.
Section 11 – State Subsidy – Explained how subsidy would be allocated. We’ll have a total, we’ll do a relative percentage, the check will come, and we’ll divvy that up based on your relative expense proportion. You’ll never get back what you spend, but you’ll get back some share of that.
Nancy Thurlow – The state really can’t, after the first year, differentiate which town has which expense because we’re going to be uploading the files as one. They don’t care about the cost center numbers on the end. There’s one number for salaries and one number for whatever. There’s no way to divvy it up.
Rob Liebow – But we will know what each SAD has spent.
Gail Marshall – Going back to paragraph b in section 11, by 2/3’s vote you can change that formula but it has to be predicated on the state making changes on the way it does business, “for that reason”.
Paul Murhpy – “For that reason” isn’t the same as “only in the case of”. There’s nothing in the language that says that you can’t do it whenever you please. The reason for the clause to be there is because of the legislature’s history.
Gail Marshall – If you and I were sitting on the AOS board and you wanted to change it and I didn’t, and there was no change in the way the state did it’s business, we’d have a fight.
Paul Murhpy – If 2/3 of the board side with one or the other of us then it’s a moot point.
Rob Liebow – For those that aren’t minimum receivers, it’s fairly easy to do that. The 279 will show your expected local contribution versus what your allocation for EPS is. The difference is your state subsidy.
So the town of Trenton, who is not a minimum receiver, is not entitled to the minimum special education.
Rob asked Jim Rier if that meant that if their state subsidy falls below what the minimum special ed is, then they wouldn’t trump back to minimum special ed? Mr. Rier said that will never happen, but it may have to be changed. Trenton and Frenchboro are the only two that are not minimum receivers.
Gail Marshall – Section 12 – Real Estate and Personal Property – “All real and personal property belonging to Member School Units shall remain the property of those Member School Units.”
Section 13 – School Closing – The AOS school committee has no authority to close a school. The governing body of the individual school is the voice on any of those issues.
Section 14 – Duration – This agreement will remain in effect until this agreement is terminated pursuant to paragraph 16 or by law.
Section 15 – Termination of Participation of Member School Unit – This section is written in an effort to attempt to see that the core functions that we do together remain consistent and that we reach that kind of uniformity and that school systems maintain that. We have to come into this with a commitment to do it by law. As a school board member, at least for the past 15 years, the school boards and communities have been consistently moving toward the kind of coordination that is emblematic in the alternative organizational structure and the way we do business today. The school boards are going to be acting to approve or disapprove this inter-local agreement. It has been the consistent policy of those boards that there is great value that each of our schools receive as a result of this coordinated effort. This is an effort to make sure that that coordination continues.
Gail Marshall – Section 16 – Termination of Inter-local Agreement – The commissioner has to approve termination of the plan as well as approving the plan.
Section 17 – Conditions of Approval – If the commissioner and the boards don’t approve the plan it’s not going to take effect.
Section 18 – Filing of Agreement.
Section 19 – Miscellaneous Provisions. Legal boilerplate.
Judy Sproule – Would like to know what Dick Spencer says if this law is repealed.
Paul Murphy – Can we all still play together or do we have to go back to the way we were?
Gail Marshall will ask Mr. Spencer.
Date and time of next meeting
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 at 7:00 p.m. AND Wednesday, 6 August 2008 at 7:00 p.m. – Public Forum
Adjournment
MOVED by Patrick Smallidge, seconded by Tammy Tripler and unanimously voted to adjourn the meeting at 9:08 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Selena Dunbar, Recording Secretary