BUCKFIELD — With a March deadline to complete a withdrawal agreement looming, the Buckfield Withdrawal Committee voted Wednesday night to hire a consultant to assist it in its work.

The unanimous vote to hire an outside expert came after two members of the committee tasked last month with researching withdrawal options reported minimal progress in their work.

Committee Chairman Glen Holmes told the committee he believed outside expertise was necessary to compile the precise data and analysis needed to develop a plan the town could bring to the negotiating table with RSU 10.

“I’m not qualified to write the plan,” he told committee members. “I don’t think anyone at this table is, personally.”

In June, voters approved a measure to negotiate the town’s withdrawal from the 12-town school district after organizers concerned about cost and education quality circulated a petition to put the issue on the ballot.

As a result of the vote, a four-member withdrawal committee was formed to negotiate the town’s departure from RSU 10 and allocated $20,000 to support its activities. If an agreement is reached, two-thirds of voters will still need to approve in a future election, according to Holmes.

The committee has been meeting since September and appears to have little to show for it. Committee members Cheryl Coffman and Judy Berg, tasked, respectively, with researching options to tuition students to another school district or moving Buckfield’s 300 K-12 students to Buckfield Junior-Senior High School for education, came to the meeting virtually empty handed.

According to state law, the committee has 90 days from its establishment to negotiate a withdrawal agreement with RSU 10 to submit to the State Department of Education for approval. It has already missed that deadline and was given an extension to March 4.

Considering the time constraint and apparent lack of progress, Holmes said hiring a qualified outside expert might help the committee direct its activities and draw up an agreement.

According to Holmes, the Board of Selectmen was not interested in organizing another vote or pursuing a different type of agreement with the school district and it was up to the committee to come up with a withdrawal agreement in a timely manner.

He suggested a consultant could take the committee’s work so far, as well as its suggestions, and come up with the correct legal language to bring to RSU 10 and Department of Education. He did not anticipate the cost of hiring a consultant to come close to the $20,000 allocated.

Berg, however, disagreed with the move, arguing that the committee needed to engage with the school district and DOE to get the raw data itself before bringing in an outside consultant. It was unwise to rush the withdrawal process, which could take significantly longer than 90 days to complete, she said.

“It may be that we can do it in that short of time,” Berg said, “but we shouldn’t just give ourselves such a deadline, it could take another year.

“It may be that (RSU 10 Superintendent Craig) King can come up with some magical fix to both improve education and reduce the cost,” she said.

Coffman agreed with Holmes, noting that it was the committee’s responsibility to complete its work in a timely manner.

“I’m not comfortable with getting a few facts here and a few facts there when we really don’t know how to put them together or even the questions we need to ask,” Coffman said.

If the committee brought in someone with experience in the withdrawal process it would get information on feasible alternatives far more quickly.

The committee, including RSU 10 director Jerry Wiley, who initially said he would vote against the measure, voted unanimously to hire the consultant.

Following the meeting, Holmes said he planned to place a newspaper advertisement for a qualified consultant and would contact the Maine School Management Association for recommendations. He was not clear if the committee needed to submit a formal bid proposal for the position.

Buckfield’s withdrawal effort was partially driven by the hope that its former SAD 39 partners, Sumner and Hartford, would follow its example and also move to withdraw, possibly allowing the re-formation of the old unit that was folded into RSU 10 in 2009.

That prospect appears unlikely as Sumner voters rejected a withdrawal proposal and there has been no movement toward pulling out of the district in Hartford.

The other nine towns in RSU 10 are Canton, Carthage, Dixfield, Peru, Byron, Mexico, Roxbury, Rumford and Hanover.

pmcguire@sunjournal.

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