STRONG — The value of community schools, the cost of special education and the true meaning of local control were just some of the subjects debated Wednesday evening, providing a preview of the issues residents will need to navigate in November when they decide whether to leave the school district.
The Strong Withdrawal Committee has been working on a plan to separate from Maine School Administrative District 58 for the past year and a half. In July, the MSAD 58 School Board and withdrawal committee approved the plan after months of negotiations.
The state Department of Education has conditionally accepted the plan — described by one committee member as more of a “road map” to guide the town through the creation of the SAU. The state required alterations to the plan’s language addressing special education, generally providing more legal exactness as to what the SAU is required to provide. Those alterations were due to changes at the state level, and the same language is being provided to other municipalities seeking to leave their districts.
Strong residents will vote on whether to implement the plan on Nov. 3, with that vote coinciding with the statewide election. At least two-thirds of those voting must approve withdrawing from MSAD 58 to move forward.
Wednesday’s information meeting was the first of two mandated by the state process. The second, to be scheduled sometime this fall, will focus less on the details of the plan and more on the ballot question.
Per the state’s requirements, MSAD 58 Chair Jessica Cain opened the meeting and then turned it over to the Strong Withdrawal Committee.
“We’ve been working for a year and a half now, to put together a plan that would be acceptable to the Department of Education,” Sue Pratt, a MSAD 58 director and committee member, said. “It’s an interesting process. Let’s just say that.”
The process had become far more complicated over the years, Pratt said, contrasting it to when Eustis withdrew from MSAD 58 in 2013.
The movement to leave the district began as a response to discussions within MSAD 58, the committee members said.
“It grew out of a lot of broader discussions that were happening around the future of the MSAD 58 school district now,” committee member Amanda Coolong said.
MSAD 58’s issues are challenges that much of the state has dealing with, Coolong noted: declining student enrollment and rising costs associated with aging facilities. Concerns over the possibility that Strong’s school — currently the Day Mountain Middle School — could be closed led to residents petitioning the select board to begin the process.
The MSAD 58 School Board took a vote in October 2025 to close Day Mountain. That vote failed to clear a two-thirds majority of the board’s weighted vote by an extremely narrow margin: 572 in favor when it needed 598.
Strong residents approved developing a withdrawal plan by a vote of 124 to 61 last summer. The select board authorized the committee to expend up to $75,000 to research the plan; they ended up spending far less, at just under $1,200, mostly for legal review.
If the vote on Nov. 3 approves leaving the district, the committee would oversee the creation of the new Strong School Administrative Unit. A five-member board for the SAU would be elected by March 2027 at the latest, with directors ultimately serving three-year terms. The town would form its own district on July 1, 2027.
Collective bargaining agreements that are currently in place — the committee identified four of them — would stay in place until they ended, at which point they’d be renegotiated.
Strong SAU would acquire the school building and surrounding property from MSAD 58 for $1. Certain equipment, furnishings, fuel and supplies would also transfer to Strong SAU, as would four buses.
Strong would run its own transportation system throughout the town for pre-K-8 students. High school students would be transported to one of three schools: Mt. Abram in MSAD 58, Mt. Blue in Regional School Unit 9, or Carrabec in RSU 74. Strong SAU would pay 105 percent of the state-assigned tuition rate for each of those schools. After that, those agreements would need to be renegotiated with their respective districts.
By law, students could continue to attend their current school for the next year. That would mean that a Strong household with a student attending elementary classes in Phillips could continue sending them there in 2027-28, or conversely, an out-of-town family with a student attending middle school at Day Mountain would be able to attend that school for at least the first year. After that, superintendent agreements would be required for students to attend classes in another district, outside of the students attending the three high schools.
Parents of high school students would need to commit in January to where their children would attend school in the next school year.
Strong’s vocational students would either attend classes at Foster CTE Center in Farmington or the Somerset Career & Technical Center in Skowhegan.
The SAU would take on its proportional share of MSAD 58’s debt service, or 24.6 percent. The final payment on a 2017 state-approved revolving renovation bond will be made prior to the date that Strong would leave the district, meaning the town would be responsible for approximately one-quarter of the debt owed on a few buses and two tractors.
Similarly, Strong would be responsible for paying a proportional share of the remaining two years of the MSAD 58 superintendent’s contract.
The SAU would receive 15 percent of the district’s undesignated fund balance.
The committee has calculated that the town will lose students in the near future, from 147 at present down to 113 in the first five years.
“Our big classes are at the secondary level right now. As we go forward they drop to about six students [per grade level],” Pratt said. “We don’t have a lot of young families coming to Strong.”
The committee’s plan calls for two multi-age classrooms, which Pratt said was a reflection of the impracticability of running classes for a few students. Class sizes would range from seven students to as many as 18 – the maximum allowable under the plan. The plan calls for ed techs to support teachers in the larger classes.
According to the plan, Day Mountain Middle School would revert to become Strong Elementary School, going from grades 6, 7 and 8 to a pre-K through grade 8 campus. Pratt noted it wasn’t clear if the Strong SAU would be required to start a 3-year-old program as part of an ongoing handoff from Child Development Services to local districts, as the state is still firming up those requirements.
The committee presented a preliminary budget of $4.1 million, which the committee said would be less than $4.2 million the town pays to educate its students now. That preliminary budget was accepted by the state as part of the plan, Pratt said, but the final budget would likely be different.
“It’s very difficult to put together the budget with today’s figures, projecting out a year and not knowing what inflation’s going to take, any of those things,” Pratt said, adding that much of the work will need to happen after an affirmative vote in November and before Strong’s town meeting in March. “We’ll need a budget that will be operational July 1.”
The budget doesn’t include revenue like tuition students [which bring income into the district], federal funding or undesignated funds. Injecting more uncertainty in the first year is not knowing how many students choose to go to a new school or not; MSAD 58 and Strong SAU would pay tuition to place their students outside the two districts.
Some in attendance questioned the preliminary budget, particularly whether it had adequately budgeted for special education at $621,000.
“I am concerned that the estimated special education budget is very low,” MSAD 58 Special Education Director Sabrina Reed-Carrier said. “And not proportionate to what we currently pay.”
Reed-Carrier said that she didn’t want to see the Strong school close either, but if the town moved ahead without a full financial picture, it would be voting first and then determining the budget afterward.
Supporters of the plan promoted it more as a way to protect the school than a cost saving effort. Placing the school in the hands of the town would ensure stability for Strong students moving forward, and allow Strong’s youngest students to attend classes in town.
“Just speaking personally, dollar bills weren’t the concern for me,” resident Roger Lambert said. “I don’t want to close the Strong school.”
Others questioned the claim that the separation would preserve local control. Under the terms of the plan Strong’s older students would be going to schools where the town had no representative, they argued.
One attendee pointed out toward the end of the meeting that there was yet another big unknown: what the repercussions of Kingfield leaving the district would be if Strong stayed.
A public hearing on the ballot question will take place in Strong, probably in October. By statute, it must be at least 10 days prior to the vote on Nov. 3.
The meeting was filmed by Mt. Blue TV.
