School Rules

At a Nov. 20 caucus, the South Portland Board of Education unanimously selected Tappen Fitzgerald to be school board chairman for 2014. Fitzgerald, in his fourth year on the school board was, until last month, development manager for the Maine Children’s Cancer program. He previously chaired the school board in 2012.

Chosen as vice-chair was Karen Callaghan, a school board member since 2007 now taking her first leadership role. Callaghan, a librarian in Scarborough, recently won a protracted legal battle waged over her right to run for school board, begun when she worked at the South Portland Public Library.

Fitzgerald and Callaghan are to be formally voted into their new roles at the annual inauguration ceremony to be held at 4 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 2, at City Hall.

New Schools

According to School Superintendent Suzanne Godin, a secondary schools building committee dormant since the new high school project was approved will be reconstituted in the spring, with the goal of deciding what to do about South Portland’s two middle schools.

Mahoney Middle School is currently 14th on a list for state renovation funding and, given that money already has been approved for projects 1 through 6 on that list, South Portland could get its bite at the apple within a couple of years, she said. However, while Mahoney is further up the list than Memorial Middle School, which sits at No. 55, it is in far better condition, structurally. Mahoney scores points, however, by being less handicapped accessible, and far less easy to wire for modern technology. Three years ago, a local task force calculated that South Portland could save about $1 million per year by consolidating all middle schoolers into one building, but the plan has always been to rebuild Memorial and sign Mahoney over to the city for use as a new City Hall. The new secondary committee will have to decide if it makes sense to pass on the money that will come up first for Mahoney renovations. Meanwhile, the school department has vowed not to move on a middle school project until the new Public Facilities Complex on Highland Avenue has been paid for, following the $14 million bond approved by voters Nov. 5. “We’ll have some decisions to make coming up pretty soon,” said Godin.

Solar System

At its Nov. 18 meeting, the South Portland City Council authorized taking $12,500 from undesignated surplus funds to pay for a feasibility study of building a solar panel array atop the old city landfill off Highland Avenue, behind where the new public facilities complex is to be built. The study will be prepared by ReVision Energy of Portland, which last year installed solar panels on top of the Planning and Development Department Office in the old Hamlin School, resulting in a 19-percent savings in electricity costs there. According to City Manager Jim Gailey, construction of the solar farm would cost $60,000, although he will apply to the Greater Portland Council of Governments for a grant to pay engineering costs.