SALEM — Maine School Administrative District 58 officials expressed concern last week about Mt. Abram High School’s future if the district breaks apart, as Kingfield and Strong prepare to vote on withdrawing in early November.
The issue came up at the MSAD 58 board of directors meeting Sept. 17 after attendees asked district leaders to explain how the withdrawal of member towns could affect Mt. Abram.
“If and when towns withdraw, I have grave concerns about our ability to provide consistent pre-K through 12 education locally,” Superintendent Laura Columbia said. “Statistically, the viability of offering pre-K through 12 education in our area goes down as towns withdraw.”
Strong and Kingfield have negotiated withdrawal agreements with MSAD 58 and received approval from the Maine Department of Education to hold votes Nov. 3, the same day as state and national elections.
The agreements are similar: Both towns would keep their elementary schools and transport students to Mt. Abram at 105 percent of the state-set tuition rate.
Strong would also transport students to Mt. Blue High School in Regional School Unit 9 and Carrabec High School in Regional School Unit 74. Families could choose which of the three schools their children attended, and the tuition money would follow each student.
Members of the Kingfield Withdrawal Committee have said that keeping Mt. Abram open is important. Through their agreements with the district, Kingfield and Strong both list Mt. Abram as a “school of guaranteed acceptance,” but that means the high school must accept students if it is open, not that it must remain open to accept them.
For MSAD 58, having the towns withdraw would mean losing the funding from Strong and Kingfield, with Kingfield providing about 40 percent of the district’s locally raised funds, while gaining tuition income at Mt. Abram.
“We would have to rely on tuition students, but that is not reliable,” board member Ashley Hopwood Farrar of Kingfield said, noting that the impact on the state’s funding formula would also play a role. “The short answer is we don’t know. It would be risky, I believe, to be relying on tuition students instead of guaranteed students from certain towns.”
“I think it can be done,” she said later. “It’s just scarier.”
Elizabeth Marble, a Freeman Township resident and district teacher who has children and grandchildren in MSAD 58, pushed the board to make those concerns clear to voters before Nov. 3.
“That tuition agreement is not enough to keep Mt. Abram open,” Marble said, “so we need to make sure that the voters hear that.”
Board member Sue Pratt of Strong, who serves on the Strong Withdrawal Committee, said that keeping Mt. Abram open would be up to the MSAD 58 board of directors. She said Strong listed the high school as a school of guaranteed acceptance as part of its withdrawal process. Pratt also said that people need to read the plan.
“It may be that Mt. Abram doesn’t stay open regardless of whether we withdraw or not,” Pratt said.
MSAD 58’s situation is rooted in issues bedeviling districts across the state: declining student enrollment, aging facilities and insufficient funding to support maintenance and renovations. Administrators have said MSAD 58 spends too much on buildings and not enough on students, and the board has spent years looking at consolidating its three community schools and Mt. Abram.
At meetings held last month in Strong and Kingfield, residents and withdrawal committee members said protecting their own community’s school was a top priority.
MSAD 58 has hired an architecture firm that has begun meeting with principals and touring the schools. The district hopes to present a road map for its facility plan to residents before the November vote. A community forum is expected in the next few weeks.
Kingfield has scheduled a community forum on its withdrawal plan for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 22, at Kingfield Elementary School.
Strong is expected to hold another hearing at least seven days before the November vote, probably in mid‑October.
Phillips has started a withdrawal process, but is further behind the other towns and has extended its deadline again. With nothing scheduled at present, the town is effectively waiting to see what decisions Kingfield and Strong make Nov. 3.
It takes a two‑thirds majority vote for a town to withdraw from a district. With coinciding national and state elections, turnout will likely be higher than in May 2025, when the towns voted to start their withdrawal processes.
Also at the Sept. 17 meeting, Columbia noted that MSAD 58 was using students for certain cleaning tasks within the schools.
Chip Gilbert Jr., the MSAD 58 facilities and transportation director, suggested the idea after seeing it in other districts and, after checking liability and other potential issues, administrators moved ahead with the arrangement.
High school students interview for the jobs and essentially fill gaps in the district’s custodial services. Their specific responsibilities and building access differ from those of an adult custodian, but the work provides an option to earn money and gain experience without needing their own transportation, which Columbia noted can be an obstacle in a rural area.
“What a really great opportunity for our students to give back, earn money and also have some work experience where they are held to expectations and their work is on display the next morning,” Columbia said.
The meeting was recorded by Mt. Blue Community Access TV.
