STOCKTON SPRINGS - The Regional School Unit 20 board of directors on Tuesday approved a plan that would relocate Stockton Springs Elementary School students to Searsport and open the school building to a new pre-K program run by Broadreach Family & Community Services.

The plan, which is the latest in an ongoing effort by the district to cut costs, would create a net savings of $190,800 according to finance committee chairman Gerald Reid. Reid said there would be some revenue from the new programs — he offered a broad estimate of $50,000 to $150,000 — but the actual amount would not be known until students were enrolled.

Discussion of closing or reorganizing Stockton Springs Elementary date back several years. The school, along with Frankfort Elementary had seen declining enrollment and is located six miles from the K-12 complex in neighboring Searsport.

Frankfort Elementary was slated for closure before the town voted to withdraw from the district last year and join MSAD 22, which includes Winterport and Hamden.

The process of closing a community elementary school was thorny enough that the school board last year looked to incoming Superintendent Brian Carpenter for alternatives. Carpenter returned with four options, three of which would keep the school open, and these were well received by community members and district teachers and staff.

The plan approved on Tuesday was not one of these, and the late changes were not well received by some residents who attended the meeting, including Ross Cottrell, father of a first grader and a pre-kindergartener, who described the plan as a de facto closure of the school.

Cottrell said he wasn't so much worried about whether his children would be well educated in Searsport — he believed they would — but he objected to the process.

"I don't feel it's a detriment to what [my children] are doing. It's just more frustrating that we weren't fully informed," he said.

Stockton Springs board member Sharon Catus also objected to what she called the "pipe dreams" of the original plans, which would have kept upper grade elementary school students in the Stockton Springs building.

"What was the point of getting the community to rally around an option that was not even possible?" she said. Catus fought back tears as she delivered her comments to the board. "To me that was a tactical error," she said. 

Several other board members expressed reservations about the plan but said they saw no other choice given the economic forecast for the district.

The plan was approved by a split vote and would go into effect in the fall, pending the resolution of an issue raised by Kris Braga, a Stockton Springs resident and parent of students both at SSE and Searsport.

Braga said she was told by a representative of the Maine Department of Education that the plan would not be permitted because it would replace a public school program with one run by a nonprofit. 

Reid said he believed Broadreach would be considered a contractor for the district in a similar way to Head Start, which currently works in several RSU 20 schools. 

The Stockton Springs case, however, would be unique in that Broadreach would be overseeing all of the programming in the building and the board resolved to answer the question.

"The vote would be subject to the law," Reid said.

Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com