BELFAST - Steve Hutchings, the Belfast Area High School Teacher who started the effort now underway in six towns of former School Administrative District 34 to back out of the consolidated Regional School Unit 20, recounted on Tuesday his first discussion with Maine Department of Education Deputy Commissioner Jim Rier.

Hutchings explained the plan, after which he said there was a long pause. When Rier spoke again, he was blunt. “Do you have any clue what you’re trying to do?” he said.

SAD 34 was combined with neighboring Searsport-based SAD 56 in 2009 as part of a statewide consolidation designed to save on administrative costs and other services that could be shared. The new law resulted in the aggregation of 167 small districts into 41 larger ones. A number of other districts were either not required to consolidate or were deemed non-conforming.

For those that were forced to combine, the process may not have been easy, but the rules were arguably clear.

Likewise, withdrawing from a district, an option that became available to municipalities at the beginning of 2012, was made slightly more complicated, but was still spelled out clearly under the law.

The rules applied only to single municipalities seeking to leave a school district, either to strike out on their own or join with another district. And according to Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin that scenario has covered most of the requests that have come in over the past year.

To date, Connerty-Marin said, 20 municipalities have cleared the first hurdle of withdrawal, a referendum vote that sets into motion a series of actions leading to a formal plan subject to later voter approval. Of these, he said, there were perhaps two cases in which a pair of towns from the same district were simultaneously seeking withdrawal, and only one involving a complete pre-consolidation district.

The coordinated withdrawal movement in Belfast and five surrounding towns — Belmont, Morrill, Northport, Searsmont and Swanville — as it turns out, is unique in the state. And while the idea put forward by organizers — that the towns would have been better off if the consolidation never happened — is simple enough on the surface, turning back the clock has required starting from scratch with laws that weren't necessarily written to work together.

In short, there’s no “undo” button for consolidation. There’s not even an “undo” road map.

None of this is news to those in the Belfast-based withdrawal movement. Between June and November 2012, each of the six municipalities approved measures at the polls seeking to petition the commissioner of the Maine Department of Education for withdrawal. Each subsequently formed its own withdrawal committee as required by law. And each is on track to submit its own withdrawal plan to the district.

Between the lines, however, there has been extensive coordination between the towns, which hope to re-form as a new school district after withdrawing from RSU 20.

Voters in Belfast — the hub of the former SAD 34, and the major financial contributor to the district — put $50,000 toward the withdrawal process, primarily for legal fees, while the other towns put aside only nominal amounts. The understanding was that Belfast, working in concert with a super committee of representatives from the surrounding towns, would draft a single plan that could be copied by each, with minor changes to fulfill the statutory requirements.

As workarounds go, the coordinated approach looked like the best chance to streamline the one-at-a-time withdrawal process. It would also bode well for keeping the six municipalities on the same page in preparation for re-forming as a new RSU.

The committees from the six towns worked with the Maine Department of Education to navigate the quirks of the law, and for the most part, scaling the single-municipality-based withdrawal statute up to a six-municipality effort has meant doing the same things six times. 

The one notable exception has been the provision that each town’s withdrawal committee must include a member of the RSU board of directors.

In the case of a single town attempting to quit its district, the provision might form a bridge between the secession movement and the school board, possibly leading to a more collaborative process. 

But the attempt by six municipalities to withdraw at once in RSU 20 thrust one-third of the board’s 18 members into a romance novel-worthy position of serving the district while simultaneously hatching on a plan leave it. 

The board is small enough that some members, as the only representative of their town, have been tapped to serve on their local withdrawal committee and not all have supported the idea of their town withdrawing.

Last week, the split-roles issue came to a head as several board members serving on non-Belfast withdrawal committees struggled to figure out the status of negotiations. Would each town need its own attorney? Would the district only address one withdrawal request at a time?

The Belfast committee submitted its plan to the RSU 20 board in late 2012 and the board returned a counter-proposal on Jan 13, according to Superintendent Brian Carpenter, who said the ball is effectively in the withdrawal group’s court.

Belfast’s proposal is currently under review by Belfast attorney Kristin Collins, who represents the city’s withdrawal committee, and RSU 20’s attorney Dick Spencer of Drummond Woodsum. 

Neither was at the RSU 20 board meeting last Tuesday and the conversation between withdrawal-committee-enlisted board members and administrators left some confusion as to what the outlying towns needed to do.

Carpenter held that state statute requires each town to present its own withdrawal plan. Discounting the board members who also serve on withdrawal committees, the superintendent said a proposal by all six towns would not only run contrary to the rules but would make it nearly impossible to arrive at a supermajority vote under the district’s weighted voting system.

Several board members seemed frustrated by the administration’s reticence to read between the statutory lines, but Carpenter said it was not the district’s job to educate the withdrawal groups or their attorney on the process.

On March 4, he reiterated that point. The towns, he said, might not need to hire their own attorneys, but each one must formally request negotiations with the district and submit a separate proposal for withdrawal.

“Once that’s done, we can start,” he said. “It’s not upon RSU 20 to seek out an agreement. It’s upon the towns … If they want to use the Belfast model, that’s fine. Just give us something so we can look at it.”

Belfast attorney Kristin Collins acknowledged that fevers are running high around the withdrawal, but said the process is moving ahead more smoothly than the discussion at the last board meeting might have suggested.

Collins said her talks with Spencer, the attorney for RSU 20, are only preliminary to the actual negotiations, which will be undertaken between the municipal committees and RSU 20. 

Once the Belfast plan is negotiated with the district, Collins said she could conceivably present the plans from the other towns. Because these would be based on the Belfast plan, with minor changes, she anticipated they could be reviewed by the RSU 20 board in fairly rapid succession. 

Carpenter expressed a similar view on Monday.

“It should be quicker because it’s boilerplate,” he said.

Then again, the district stands to lose without the six towns.

If the withdrawal goes through as planned, the RSU would be reduced to Searsport and Stockton Springs, towns that have comparatively low student enrollment and high property values. The combination is deadly in terms of Maine's Essential Programs and Services formula, which is used to determine the state’s contribution to school districts. General Purpose Aid for Education is doled out on a per pupil basis with more money typically allotted to towns with lower valuations. 

The formula is complicated and takes other factors into consideration, but Carpenter said a district composed of Searsport and Stockton Springs would most likely be worse off without the former SAD 34 towns.

On Monday he went as far as to say that the two-town district would not be sustainable, particularly in light of the state’s recent move to shift the responsibility for teacher retirement payments to the local districts. Add in the threat of curtailments and an anticipated increase in the district’s contribution to health insurance under a provision of the Affordable Care Act and Carpenter said it's only going to get harder for schools.

“The money’s not there,” he said.

The stakes in the current negotiations have prompted murmurs that the district could drag out the negotiation process long enough to sabotage the withdrawal effort. RSU 20 board chairman Anthony Bagley, of Searsport, said last Tuesday, however, that those rumors were unfounded.

“We’ve been said to be stalling,” he said. “We’re not.”

Bagley reiterated the essence of the law, which applies to single municipalities not groups. By the same token, he added, the law doesn't allow the district to give physical assets — buildings, school buses, etc. — to a group of municipalities.

As of Tuesday, March 5, there was still confusion among some board members and withdrawal organizers, several of whom addressed the City Council on the status of the withdrawal plan.

Belfast school board members Dorothy Odell and Dean Anderson spoke of positive developments in schools and improvements on the board under the administration of Carpenter, who started with the district last June. 

Odell, who also serves on the Belfast withdrawal committee, noted that several administrative logjams that have been the rallying cries of withdrawal supporters have since been resolved, including a teacher contract four years in the making that unified the disparate pay scales of the former SADs.

Proponents of the withdrawal have estimated annual savings to the new six-town district of $1.4 million per year, but Odell and Anderson questioned the projections, noting that the original consolidation was pitched based on the merits of savings that came up short of projections. 

Hutchings, the self-described "pit bull" of the withdrawal movement, grumbled about the plan being held up in discussions between attorneys. At this point, he said, he just wants the RSU 20 board to approve a plan so it can be voted up or down in June. In order to do that, he said, the attorneys need to wrap it up so the board can have something to vote on.

“We’ve got two school board meetings to meet the timeframe for the June election,” he said.

Belfast's RSU 20 withdrawal committee meets at Wednesday, March 6 at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall.

Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com