FARMINGTON — An effort that could bring Starks into Regional School District 9 moved a step forward this week.
On Tuesday, two-thirds of the residents of the Somerset County town voted 164-27 to support withdrawing from RSU 59 based in Madison and join RSU 9.
At the RSU 9 board meeting Tuesday night, after learning the results of the Starks vote by cellphone from First Selectman Paul Frederic, directors agreed to authorize Superintendent Michael Cormier to take the next step and submit a plan to the Maine Department of Education. The two districts have been having informal discussions about Starks joining the district for the past year.
If the process is approved by voters in RSU 9 this spring, the transition will be official as of July 1, 2012. That means between 50 and 70 Starks students from prekindergarten to grade 12 would be attending classes in Farmington area schools in the fall.
RSU 9 includes Chesterville, Farmington, Industry, New Sharon, New Vineyard, Temple, Vienna, Weld and Wilton.
The greatest benefit to RSU 9 will be the infusion of state education subsidy funds and local tax dollars that were being paid to RSU 59, which also serves Madison, Athens and Brighton Plantation.
“It could mean a pretty significant increase in revenue for our schools of between $400,000 and $500,000,” Cormier said Wednesday.
That additional money could be used to support district programs at a time when cuts in state aid are anticipated, fixed budget costs are going up, and debt service on the district’s two new schools will be increasing, he said.
“This would provide us with additional enrollment, and under the school funding formula, the controlling factors are enrollment and property valuation,” he said.
And absorbing 50 to 70 students, with only a few students in each grade level, will not overwhelm the school system, he said.
Any increased expenses would be in transportation.
Starks will not only bring additional revenue to the district but will pick up a piece of the local share of the district’s budget, he said.
Frederic said more than 80 percent of the voters supported joining RSU 9 and he attributed that strong showing to two things.
One was the finding of an exploratory committee that selectmen appointed to collect information on options available for educating Starks children, he said.
The group compared academic performance, advanced placement course opportunities, graduation rates, extra-curricular activities such as music programs and athletics, and students going on to post-secondary education.
The committee also looked at costs and how a change would affect the local tax burden.
The conclusion was that switching to RSU 9 would save Starks between $70,000 and $100,000 a year in local tax dollars, Frederic said.
“There would be better educational opportunities for our children and a tremendous cost-savings for our citizens through their tax dollars,” he said.
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