STANDISH – After learning that leaders of Standish and Frye Island agreed to hire a consultant to study the feasibility of both towns withdrawing from School Administrative District 6, Standish residents differ widely in their reaction to the proposal.

“What would happen to the other towns?” asked Freda Hobbs, a seasonal resident, when interviewed last week at Colonial Marketplace. “The costs would be astronomical, that would be my first thought. That’s crazy.”

If Standish withdraws from the school district and instead creates a stand-alone district, Hobbs wondered whether it would need to hire a superintendent and potentially construct new buildings to accommodate the students.

“Where do you draw the line?” she asked. “To me, it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t sound cost-effective.”

Another resident, Bill Napolitano, agreed.

“I think it would cost too much to get out of it [the district] alone,” said Napolitano. He said he would not support Standish leaving SAD 6.

“It’s costing us enough now,” he said.

Janice Gryskwicz, another Standish resident who has a granddaughter in the third grade in the system, had yet to hear about Standish pursuing a study to withdraw from the district.

“I would think … incorporating all the towns would be a better deal,” Gryskwicz said. “I am just shocked that it’s even out there being discussed. I don’t think I’d go for it. What will happen to the sports? I don’t know what would happen to the busing situation, and would the town have to buy its own fleet of buses?”

According to the district’s website, there are 4,000 students and 600 staff members, making SAD 6 the third-largest district in Maine, which also serves Buxton, Hollis and Limington. The bus fleet, which is the largest public-sector fleet in the state, covers 5,300 miles each day.

“The children are on the school buses for a long, long time each day,” said Wilma Stack, wife of Lou Stack, who serves on the Standish Town Council. The two have a grandson in the first grade at Edna Libby Elementary School in Standish.

“If we had our own system, [students] wouldn’t have to ride all over one or two towns to get to high school,” Wilma Stack said. “I live on the Windham [town] line. It’s a long commute and it makes for a long day for the students.”

Working together

On Oct. 8, Standish Councilors voted unanimously to allow Town Manager Gordon Billington to hire a consultant, in collaboration with Frye Island, to study the costs and benefits of withdrawing from school district, which also serves Buxton, Hollis and Limington.

The council’s decision to pursue the withdrawal study was spurred by a letter Billington received from Frye Island Town Manager Wayne Fournier on Sept. 5, which indicated that Frye Islanders would like to find some relief in paying their $1.4-million share of the school assessment.

Though Frye Island has attempted succession before, this is the first time Standish is pursuing withdrawal, with the feasibility study as the town’s first step.

In April 2001, three years after Frye Island seceded from Standish with the condition that it continue to pay school taxes, islanders tried to withdraw from the district, arguing that it shouldn’t have to pay so much toward a school system it didn’t send students to.

Twelve years later, Frye Island still has no year-round residents and doesn’t send any students to Bonny Eagle.

Pride

Standish town manager Gordon Billington and some of its residents speculate the town’s population has grown to the point it could potentially support a stand-alone school district. Billington’s vision is that if Standish pursued withdrawal, a stand-alone district would instill “a tremendous sense of community” pride in its residents.

“I was in the last class to graduate from our own high school here in Standish in 1961,” said Stack.

“When we [joined] SAD 6, to me, we lost our community spirit; it just wasn’t the same. I just want the children to have the best education possible and for it to be feasible for the taxpayers,” she said.

At the time, Stack said, the student population in Standish wasn’t large enough to support the different aspects of curriculum.

“Now, maybe we are at a point where we can make it work and the students can be educated in our own town, and we can have a say in what our school does,” Stack said.

Costs unknown

On Monday, Billington said the town has sent out requests for proposals to hire a consultant. No new information, such as the costs and benefits of withdrawal, were available as of this week, he said.

Billington has said without knowing the results of the feasibility study, he could not say how much money Standish would save if it pursued withdrawal.

“If [withdrawal] is a matter of saving money, I’d like to know what they are doing with the money they are saving,” said Norm Rust, a Standish resident who once served on the school board in the Oxford Hills School District. He believes the feasibility study is worth pursuing, he said last Friday.

“I just hope they will take their time and look at it carefully, to make sure it’s really going to benefit the students,” Rust said. “If it happens, I think they should look into sharing a superintendent,” he added.

Stack said she heard from other Standish residents they are concerned about the costs associated with creating a stand-alone district, but said “they ought to be worried about what it’s costing us right now in SAD 6. The state reimbursed the school system for teacher retirement. The taxpayers are paying teacher retirement right now in this year’s budget [$17,000 per month] and we are not getting compensated,” Stack said.

“Maybe our town has grown, so it’s feasible for [Standish] to have our own school. I don’t know, but that’s what I hope the study is going to tell us,” Stack said. “If we could support our own high school, I’d be 100 percent behind it.”

Standish, which was a founding member of the district in the 1960s, has several elementary schools in the Bonny Eagle school system.

The Bonny Eagle middle and high schools are located at the Standish-Buxton town line. The former Standish High School, located in Sebago Lake Village, was vacated after formation of the district and later converted to a community theater.