The local regional planning committee (RPC) for school consolidation faced a full agenda last Tuesday, January 15 at the Edgecomb Eddy School. Since last fall, the RPC, like other similar committees across the state, has been working diligently to develop a plan to merge School Unions 49, 74, and Jefferson into a new regional school unit. On Tuesday night, in the face of continuing uncertainty regarding how the state legislature may change the consolidation law, the RPC decided to table all work until it has "definitive guidance" from the legislature on how to proceed.

The legislature's education committee endorsed LD 1932 in December, as an emergency measure, to amend certain financial aspects of the consolidation law that were particularly burdensome for some communities, including those on the Boothbay peninsula. As an emergency measure, LD 1932 would become effective immediately but requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass. LD 1932 would allow RPCs to determine local cost shares for education costs over the essential programs and services level, would retain special education subsidies for minimum subsidy receivers, would remove the 2-mill minimum education mill rate, and would delay the budget validation process for an additional year. The education committee is now considering additional amendments to the school consolidation law and has scheduled three work sessions this week to develop a second fix-up bill to supplement LD 1932. Changes to the law that would allow greater local control over local school budgets and property are on the table for consideration.

Given the likelihood of substantive modifications to the law, the local RPC decided unanimously on Tuesday night to delay further work on its merger plan. The RPC had been working toward submitting a revised, but probably still incomplete, plan to the Department of Education to meet a February 1 deadline. At the RPC meeting, School Union Superintendents Robert Bouchard and Eileen King told committee members that there were no penalties for missing that deadline.