March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Second vote slated on CSD> Tuition arrangement option also would have drawbacks

APPLETON — Appleton’s options for high school education are boiling down to a choice between the inexpensive and the permanent.

The town votes for a second time May 3 on joining Camden, Rockport, Hope and Lincolnville in a community school district and in planning to build a replacement for crowded Camden-Rockport High School. Appleton voted against the district March 15, while the other four towns approved it overwhelmingly.

Hope, Appleton and Lincolnville have paid tuition to send their students to SAD 28’s high school for nearly 30 years. As members of a CSD, they would have voting representatives on a high school board of directors and would share in the debt service and operating costs of the new high school.

Appleton now receives a state education subsidy of 70 percent, lowering the town’s per pupil expenses to about $1,600, one half to one fourth of the other towns using CRHS. The CSD would have added an estimated $120 to the property tax on a $100,000 home in Appleton.

The May 3 revote was requested by the Appleton school board and approved by the selectmen after many residents said they were poorly informed about the CSD and unsure about the town’s other options for educating its 73 high school students.

Townspeople have been working in study committees for several weeks, exploring those options: making a tuition arrangement for all Appleton students with another high school, allowing parents and students to pay tuition at the school of their choice, building and operating Appleton’s own village high school and forming an alternate CSD with four or five other inland towns. The committees presented their findings at a public meeting here Wednesday night.

Since towns paying tuition do not contribute to capital expenses, a tuition arrangement appears to be Appleton’s least costly choice, but both tuition committees found significant drawbacks and additional expenses.

Patty Sheehan reported that the pickings for sending all Appleton students to one high school on a long-term tuition basis are slim. Several of the seven high schools in the region are already overcrowded and none seemed interested in entering into a contract, meaning attendance would be from year to year as space is available.

As for tuition with individual choice of school, Eileen DelMonte said local high schools could absorb Appleton students, but without a contract.


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