Vassalboro school board initiates plans if school is needed for voting

Vassalboro Community School (contributed photo)

by Mary Grow

Before they began discussing the proposed 2025-26 school budget at their April 8 meeting, Vassalboro School Board members dealt with monthly business items. Major topics were how to prepare in case November voting is at Vassalboro Community School, and how to provide financial aid to families of students attending the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.

School and town officials are likely not to know until fall whether state officials will allow continued voting in the Vassalboro town office. If the town office is considered too small, the school gymnasium is the alternative – an alternative school board chairman Jolene Gamage said state officials favor.

VCS Principal Ira Michaud said if the school is a voting site, a majority of teachers would like to have a remote day, when students physically stay home but are virtually in school.

A remote day will take planning, Michaud said; staff do not plan to copy Covid remote days. If remote learning works for election day, it could be used in the future if VCS uses all its allowed storm days and snow keeps coming.

One important point, Superintendent Alan Pfeiffer said, is to send home meals for students the day before. That way VCS will not lose a day’s state school meals subsidy – even one day’s subsidy is a sum worth noticing, finance director Paula Pooler commented.

Gamage encouraged school staff to develop a plan to try this year if it is needed.

The Maine School of Science and Mathematics, in Limestone, has one VCS student, Judson Smith, who is completing his freshman year. Eighth-graders Savannah Judkins and Agatha Meyer have been admitted for next year.

The state pays the students’ tuition, but not their room and board, which cost around $11,000 a year.

School board members and the students’ families discussed the issue in March. Board members at the time thought they did not have a policy relating to possible town help with room and board.

By April 8, they had found one. Gamage apologized to the Judkins and Meyers families for the period of anxiety, and she and Pfeiffer agreed that under the formula described in the policy, each of the three families is entitled to $5,303 in aid.

The amount could change, if factors in the formula change, Pfeiffer said. Board members voted to approve $5,303 per student, with Zachary Smith, Judson Smith’s father, abstaining on the vote.

In other business April 8, Pfeiffer introduced Judy-Ann Bouchard, who will succeed Tanya Thibeau as special education director next year. He predicted the two will have frequent conversations in the next few months.

Michaud praised Rod Robilliard and the six student teams he prepared for local Odyssey of the Maine competition. Two teams brought home trophies and went on to the state level, an accomplishment Michaud called spectacular for novice teams.

(The state Odyssey of the Mind website describes it as a creative problem-solving program that supports educational goals.)

Assistant Principal Tabitha Brewer said she is in touch with town officials about maintaining cooperative recreational programs without the town’s community program director, who was the liaison between town and school until she resigned last month.

Pfeiffer has a meeting scheduled with Town Manager Aaron Miller and Public Works Director Brian Lajoie to talk about afternoon traffic congestion as parents arrive to pick up VCS students.

The school board met again April 9 to continue budget discussion, and an hour later met with the budget committee. The next regular school board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 13.