A new high school building is on the ballot in the Boothbay area this November. The price is the biggest problem.
The school district that includes Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, Edgecomb, Georgetown and Southport put forward a referendum to replace Boothbay Region High School and renovate Boothbay Region Elementary School at a combined price of $89 million.
Replacing the Cold War-era high school would be $60 million of that, and there would be no financial assistance from the state. The problems in the Boothbay region are similar to those in other parts of Maine. While the building is outdated, enrollment has fallen in recent years. Some think the board could have advanced cheaper options.
“The town is going to be stuck with this bond,” former Boothbay Harbor Selectman Denise Griffin said. “So we need to make sure we’re spending money on the right things.”
If both parts of the referendum pass in November, Boothbay’s taxes could increase by 40 percent, Town Manager Daniel Bryer said. School officials would raise funds to offset costs, said Superintendent Robert Kahler of the district known as AOS 98.
Some of the options that people including Griffin are asking for include a regional school with neighboring towns and only renovations on the old high school instead of constructing a new building. But Kahler said the school board considered these options. The process for crafting a regional school is complicated and takes a long time, and the old high school is too run-down to simply make repairs, he said.
The high school was built in 1956 and lacks insulation, has structural cracks and needs more space for more science, technology, engineering, and math education, Kahler said. At the combined elementary and middle school, three pipes burst last year.
“The high school is in a condition where if a significant investment is not made soon … deciding to postpone decisions would ultimately lead to the high school closing,” Kahler said. “It’s not going to get any less expensive to repair.”
Another issue that concerns Griffin is the seemingly skewed tax burden on different towns within the school district. The tuition cost per student in Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor is between $20k-22k, while the state-mandated tuition cost for students outside the district is just under $13k. With tax increases, the tuition in the Boothbay region is likely to increase.
This goes hand-in-hand with the increasing number of students going to Boothbay Region High School and Boothbay Regional Elementary School from towns that don’t have their own high school. Despite that, demographics have led to the student population at the Boothbay schools dropping from nearly 600 in 2011 to 480 in 2021, according to documents from AOS 98.
In 2021, the amount of students attending the high school from outside the region was nearly that of Boothbay Harbor. Seventy-five students from Boothbay attended the high school that year. This is why some are arguing for a regional school.
But preserving the location of the high school in the Boothbay region as a hub for the community is important, and waiting the years to come up with a consolidation plan might take too long for the building to remain safe, Kahler said. If the community votes down Question 2 on the referendum and wants a regional school, he said the school board will look into it.
If the referendums pass, the renovation of the elementary and middle school and the construction of the high school could take about four years to complete, Kahler said. The new high school would be complete in February of 2027, and the renovations would be done that summer.
Kahler said he’s looking forward to hearing the community’s response to the referendum in November.
“One of the things that attracted me to this region is they have smaller schools, which in a lot of ways can be more nimble and more adapt to needs,” Kahler said. “And these communities are very special, they’re very involved.”
