STANDISH – To help Frye Islanders find some relief in paying their $1.4 million share of the school assessment, Standish town councilors voted unanimously Tuesday 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 Administrative District 6, which also serves Buxton, Hollis and Limington.

Standish councilors on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with Frye Island to share the costs of hiring the consultant. Standish would pay for 87 percent of the associated costs, while Frye Island would pay for 13 percent.

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, Billington said.

“The biggest issue and [budget] line item creating the most angst to the town residents is the school assessment,” which for Frye Island is nearing $1.4 million, Fournier wrote.

In response to Fournier’s concerns, the Standish Town Council considered Frye Island’s letter and decided to investigate the issue further to determine whether pursuing withdrawal from SAD 6 is feasible, Billington said. He said the two towns annually pay about $10 million to SAD 6.

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.

First attempt

While it is the first time Standish has probed the possibility of exiting SAD 6, Frye Island has attempted secession before. 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, Fournier said Tuesday. Twelve years later, Frye Island still has no year-round residents and doesn’t send any students to Bonny Eagle.

“We seceded from Standish back in 1998,” Fournier said. “While we were in the process of seceding, there was a memorandum of understanding, at the time, that married us with Standish and the school system. A couple years after we seceded, we attempted to withdraw from the school district, but the state passed legislation saying we couldn’t.”

In 1998, Frye Island’s share of the school assessment was around $375,000. Now, 15 years later, the assessment has increased by more than $1 million, Fournier said.

Frye Island’s property tax rate is nearly $22 per $1,000 of valuation. The island’s increasing school assessment costs, Fournier said, has once again motivated the island to revisit the options available and develop a strategy to address the state Legislature.

LD 500, enacted by the Legislature in 2001, prevented Frye Island from withdrawing from the school district and prohibits any future efforts to withdraw, Fournier said. In 2004, the Legislature enacted LD 1, which required towns to contribute to their school districts based on the number of students in the school system.

The stipulation, said Fournier, is that the island does not have a student population, nor has it ever.

“We really have no voice,” Fournier said, when it comes to the school budget. “The number of voters we have relative to the school district is minimal.”

In early 2005, the Legislature inserted a section into the law reverting the Bonny Eagle school district to the cost-sharing formula in place before LD 1.

Though Frye Island’s share of the school assessment of $1.4 million may not seem like much to some communities, for a seasonal island that has a limited tax base and operates solely on residential property taxes, Fournier said, the increase in the island’s share through the years “has become a tremendous burden” on taxpayers who can only live on the island for about six months a year.

The impact of the school budget on Frye Island taxpayers “has been pretty substantial,” said Frye Island Executive Committee Member Gary Donohue. “Our share of it has become astronomical for such a small community.”

“The increase this year is around 8.5 percent and municipal services [like roadwork and ferry repairs] are suffering as a result of paying the school tax. We are just looking to pay it [the school assessment] at a more equitable rate, based on the time we are on the island,” Donohue said.

Superintendent Frank Sherburne did not return phone calls seeking comment. According to the district’s website, there are 4,000 students and 600 staff members, making it the third-largest district in Maine. The bus fleet, which is the largest public-sector fleet in the state, covers 5,300 miles each day.

Standish pride

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

His vision is that if Standish formed a stand-alone school district, it would “build a tremendous sense of community pride” in Standish, explaining that Standish’s population of around 10,000 is the largest in SAD 6. He believes the town could support its own school system based on the fact that towns of comparable size, including Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth, Yarmouth and Freeport, are able to operate their own high schools.

Lou Stack, a Standish councilor who has been a vocal opponent of Gov. Paul LePage’s two-year budget that eliminated state revenue sharing with municipalities, said Standish expends $17,000 a month toward teacher retirement costs, and he is concerned about the school budget increase the district has put on Standish.

Due to the shift of retirement costs from the state to districts, Stack said, towns in SAD 6 were left footing an even bigger bill for next year.

“We want to look into whether it makes sense to have our own school or stay with the district,” Stack said, “but we don’t know until we have the study done.”