DURHAM – The question of Durham’s future in Regional School Unit 5 is going to the voters in November.

Durham selectmen voted unanimously Sept. 11 to approve placing a referendum question on the Nov. 6 ballot asking residents if they want the town to pull out of the RSU, which also includes Freeport and Pownal.

Janet Smith, Durham’s town administrator, said that a public hearing on the ballot question must be held at least 10 days prior to the election. That hearing date has been set for Monday, Oct. 22, from 7-10 p.m. at the Durham Community School gym.

The ballot question, as approved by the selectmen, reads: “Do you favor filing a petition for withdrawal with the board of directors of Regional School Unit 5 and with the Commissioner of Education, authorizing the withdrawal committee to expend $50,000 and authorizing the municipal officers to issue notes in the name of the town of Durham or otherwise pledge the credit of the Town of Durham in an amount not to exceed $50,000 for this purpose?”

According to the selectmen, the $50,000 would cover all expenses and legal fees related to the withdrawal committee’s work in formulating a plan for Durham to break away from the district.

At a meeting last month, the Durham Educational Exploration Committee, an eight-member committee of residents that has been exploring the town’s options if voters decide to begin the process of breaking away from the RSU, provided an informational handout that described the implications of the vote.

According to the handout, a yes vote would mean: “You are saying you definitely want to withdraw from RSU 5. It is not a vote for a feasibility study, or for exploring options to see if there is something better out there. It is a definitive vote to withdraw from the RSU.”

If residents vote no on the question, the process stops and Durham would remain in the RSU as it presently is constituted.

Kevin Nadeau, the chairman of the Durham Educational Exploration Committee, said the committee would continue to work until the public hearing. “Our primary role was to investigate all of the potential options (if Durham was to leave the RSU) and some of the considerations of those options and report to the town at the public hearing before the vote happens,” he said. “After that, our role would be done.”

While Nadeau said the committee is continuing to explore scenarios for the town, one thing is for certain: the old days of Durham students being able to choose their own high school are gone.

“We know for a fact that high school choice, as it existed pre-RSU, is not really an option,” Nadeau said. “The reason for that is the state requires any town withdrawing from an RSU that doesn’t have a high school of its own to have a 10-year contract with a high school and that contract has to guarantee that high school will take any and all kids from (that town) that wish to go there. So that means the high school we contract with has to have a pretty significant amount of capacity, 160-200 seats. The only high schools that share a border with Durham, other than Freeport, which have that kind of capacity are Brunswick or Lisbon. Other high schools really wouldn’t be an option for a contract.”

Nadeau added that he believed it would be highly unlikely for a school to sign a deal with the town that doesn’t lock in all of Durham’s students to that school.

“I can’t imagine that a high school is going to enter into a contract where they will guarantee (Durham) seats but expect no guarantee in return,” he said.

Nadeau’s committee was still working on preliminary figures, but he said their initial findings show that it would be more expensive for Durham to pull out of the RSU, as the town would have to be responsible for costs that are now shared by the other towns in the district, such as the gifted and talented programs.

As part of the state’s school reorganization law, Durham joined Pownal and Freeport to form RSU 5 in 2009. However, at the beginning of this year, state law allowed for towns to withdraw from RSUs, provided a series of steps was followed.

First, a petition requesting withdrawal must be signed by at least 10 percent of the town’s voters, something that was achieved when more than 250 Durham residents signed a withdrawal petition at the beginning of the year. The question of leaving the district must then be approved by a majority of the town’s voters, and then the selectmen must notify the RSU of the town’s intent to withdraw.

Following that, the town must form a committee to come up with an educational plan that must be approved by the commissioner of the Maine Department of Education, a process that will begin if the residents vote in favor of withdrawal on Nov. 6.

A vote to separate the Durham Community School from RSU 5 has been set for Nov. 6.