The school board that oversees Camden Hills Regional High School is once again addressing the age-old fate of the Bus Barn, at Lion’s Lane in Camden. Although originally constructed as just that — a bus barn — it currently houses the alternative high school Zenith program and administrative offices for two school districts, SAD 28 (Camden-Rockport K-8) and the Five Town CSD (Appleton, Camden, Hope, Lincolnville and Rockport).

The barn is technically owned by SAD 28, and the CSD leases space from it. But now, the CSD school board, which oversees Camden Hills Regional High School, wants to plumb all options and figure out the future for Zenith.

The topic will be on the Jan. 4 CSD board agenda, when the regularly scheduled meeting convenes at 7 p.m. in the Chorus Room at the high school on Route 90 in Rockport.

The board will take up the questions: Should Zenith move to the Seton School on Free Street in Camden? Or to a new stand-alone building at the high school’s Rockport campus?

The agenda also includes hearing a request for a student trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, a suggestion to have students acquire their own laptops for school after the school after the CSD completes a two-year lease for laptops, a report of the school’s latest state assessment data, and multiple reports from administrators, as well as policy reviews.

See full agenda below, and read the entire board packet of premeeting material with the attached PDF.

Bus Barn

The Bus Barn was built as a maintenance facility in which the district-owned buses could be worked on, and where the transportation offices would be located.

But space constraints have dictated otherwise, and for the past 20-plus years, the Zenith program and administrative offices of two school districts have been housed there. It’s where countless school board, committee and subcommittee meetings have taken place, and the barn even looks more like an office building that a structure built with bus bays.

But with the planned reconstruction of the Camden-Rockport Middle School campus, the Five Town CSD board is again considering its options for vacating the Bus Barn, and reverting it to its original intended purpose.

In 2015, an ad hoc facilities committee formed to seek alternative office spaces, and produced more than a dozen options, according to board minutes from its December 2016 meeting.

The most cost effective option included relocating the Zenith program to the high school property in a new building, or moving it to the Seton School, on the corner of Free and Mechanic streets in Camden. That building is currently owned by the Bennett T. Scheuer Learning Center LLC and was operating as an independent school until last year.

At the December school board meeting, board members encouraged Superintendent Maria Libby to pursue costs associated with occupying that property, as well as costs of renovating the Bus Barn.

 Full agenda