BELFAST - The city's Regional School Unit 20 withdrawal committee recently adjusted its cost savings estimates up from the roughly $600,000 calculated last November to around $1.6 million based on the just-completed budget for the coming year.

District administrators have reviewed the numbers, and though they came up with a total closer to $1.3 million, the essential claim that withdrawal would bring a financial benefit to the six towns is undisputed among those who have studied the numbers.

This hasn't stopped other influential players from weighing in with flawed information, according to Belfast withdrawal committee members Eric Sanders and Susan Woods who sat down with PenBay Pilot last week to talk about the hard numbers and moving political obstacles of the withdrawal debate.

At its core, the withdrawal effort is a coordinated plan among the six towns of the former School Administrative District 34, based in Belfast, to undo the state-mandated consolidation of their district with neighboring Searsport-based SAD 56. 

As clearly as consolidation was spelled out in state statute, there was no equivalent provision for deconsolidation. State officials have reasoned that the former districts no longer exist. As such, state law allows municipalities to withdraw from one school district and join another district, but only on an individual basis.

Frankfort did just that after the town's elementary school was pegged for closure by RSU 20. Residents voted in 2012 to leave the district, and last month finalized a move to neighboring RSU 22. The deal included a option for students to stay at their RSU 20 school for one transitional year, and for high school students to stay through graduation, but the net effect for RSU 20 in the coming year is an anticipated loss of around $1 million in state education funding, which is allotted on a per pupil basis.

For the former SAD 34 towns, the only option akin to deconsolidating was for each town to individually withdraw from the district, then collectively reform as a new RSU.

Whether the law matched demand, or the hoops discouraged those in districts where consolidation had not resulted in the promised savings, the six towns in Waldo County are the only ones in the state to attempt this kind of coordinated withdrawal and reformation.

The process officially started last year when voters in Belfast, Belmont, Morrill, Northport, Searsmont and Swanville approved a ballot question to petition the state for withdrawal. The votes required each town to form a committee charged with drafting a withdrawal plan. Belfast took the lead in drafting a withdrawal plan that was replicated by the other towns, all of which were accepted this spring by the RSU 20 board of directors and the Maine Department of Education and are scheduled to go to a referendum vote on June 11.

For those who support the withdrawal, two major obstacles remain. The withdrawal plans, as they are written, are contingent on all six towns approving them at the polls. If the plan is voted down in one town, the other five towns would not have the option to press ahead. According to Woods and Sanders the clause was based on the original idea of returning to the old SAD 34 group and to avoid partial withdrawal that left an outlying town as part of RSU 20.

State law also requires a total voter turnout of 50-percent of the number for the last gubernatorial election. In a midterm election normally reserved for approval of the school budget, this would typically be a major challenge, but Sanders is hoping the significant staff cuts and tax hike that are virtually guaranteed in the current RSU 20 budget, will drive voters to the polls.

If the withdrawal passes, another vote for the formation of a new district would likely happen in November followed by the election of a school board. If all goes according to plan, the new district would open for the 2014-15 school year.

"I wanted to know why these people wanted to withdraw," Woods said, referring to the petitioners who successfully brought the issue to referendum last year. "It's wasn't about the money at all [initially], but we couldn't dodge that question because it kept coming back to money."

"It could have gone up or down," said Sanders, who also serves on the Belfast City Council and was the chairman of the finance committee on the former SAD 34 school board. "Our job was to create the best plan. It turns out this is going to save money." 

The reason, they say, is the primarily declining enrollment in the former SAD 56 towns. Frankfort left the district and took its state subsidies with it. Stockton Springs lost entire grades from its elementary school last year due to low enrollment and was recently approved for conversion to a preschool in an effort to generate revenue. The remaining elementary school students are slated to go to Searsport schools starting next year.

Regardless of this consolidation, which figures to raise enrollment at the Searsport K-12 complex, Sanders and Woods see Belfast continuing to foot the lion's share of the district's budget.

Several members of the RSU 20 board and district administrators have cast doubt on the claims of the Belfast committee. Searsmont board member Valerie Mank in an open letter to district residents disputed the claim that the former SAD 56 towns aren't pulling their weight, saying that they are not only covering their costs but contributing over $400,000 to shared expenses.

Woods said the argument sounds good until you calculate the shared expenses of the district, which she has, in detail. These total around $13 million of which roughly $8 million is not covered by the state. From this figure, the share owed by Searsport and Stockton Springs is $2.75 million, which Woods noted is a far cry from the roughly $400,000 cited by Mank as the towns' additional contribution.

"We can trace these numbers back to a document," she said.

On Tuesday night, Belfast school board member Alan Wood claimed RSU 20 Superintendent Brian Carpenter had not substantiated the savings projected by the withdrawal committee. With some variation in the bottom line, Carpenter has confirmed the savings with PenBay Pilot. Sanders later offered a rebuttal claiming that Carpenter had substantiated the committee's $1.6 million savings projections, which was also incorrect.

Wood also questioned why Belfast would balk at supporting Searsport but not question the contributions of any of the small towns that were part of the former SAD 34.

Sanders and Susan Woods believe the crux of the issue is that SAD 34 was viable and the goal is to return to that. The decision to include all the towns from the former district is a natural division, Woods said, given the history of the two districts, including differences in philosophy and culture.

"We're not a consolidated district as we are," she said. "We have a central office, but it looks and feels no different."

Sanders said he believes the numbers speak for themselves. The new district would save money, and in his view that has the potential to translate into a better education.

"There's no negative to this plan," he said.

A public hearing in Belfast on RSU 20 withdrawal proposal will be held tonight at Troy Howard Middle School at 6:30 p.m.

Additional public hearings include:

May 23 - Belmont, 6:30 p.m., Town Office; Morrill, 6:30 p.m., Community Center.

May 29 - Northport, 7 p.m., Edna Drinkwater Elementary School; Searsmont, 6:30 p.m.,Community Center, lower level; Swanville, 6 p.m., Kermit Nickerson Elementary School.

A referendum in all six towns including the withdrawal question and the 2013-14 budget for RSU 20 will be held on June 11.

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Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com