Oak Hill High School in Wales, part of Regional School Unit 4, is pictured last year. RSU 4, which also includes Litchfield and Sabattus, is one of the school districts in Maine trying to fill vacancies before the start of the school year. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal
LITCHFIELD – Jill Harrison of Wales hopes her son will have a classroom teacher by the start of school on August 28, the first day of school.
Chelsea Sawyer, another mother from Wales, hopes that her child’s individual education plan will continue to be implemented despite the vacancies.
The mothers were just some of the parents who voiced their concerns at a special Regional School Unit 4 board meeting Tuesday night after seven of the 39 Carrie Ricker School staff members resigned since July, including four classroom teachers and the principal.
The meeting focused specifically on Carrie Ricker School. However, across the district, 17 people have resigned since July 1.
Superintendent Katy Grondin said that despite the vacancies, the school still plans to open and that all student needs will be met. She expects the positions to be filled within the next few weeks, noting that there are already several applicants for the positions.
“I’ve gotten certain questions, like, ‘What if you can’t hire them?’ But there are a lot of contingency plans that need to be implemented, including reviewing current staff, caseloads and hiring long-term replacements,” Grondin said at the meeting.
In recent months, a committee in Litchfield was formed in Regional School Unit 4 – which includes Litchfield, Sabattus and Wales – to explore the possibility of seceding from the school district. Two weeks ago, the three towns in RSU 4 overwhelmingly rejected the school district’s proposed $22.78 million budget in their second referendum, after cutting the original budget by $600,000.
The budget itself eliminated several teaching positions, including a science teacher, an art teacher, a music teacher, a physical education teacher, and three teachers who worked in the technology department, the library, and a kindergarten.
In addition, several school districts in the state have experienced problems hiring teachers and strikes, most notably at RSU 21 in Kennebunk, where nearly 30 teachers have quit in the past two months. School districts have struggled to hire teachers in recent years as some leave the profession and others seek better-paying jobs in other school districts.
Maine state law requires teachers to earn at least $40,000 in their first year, after which they are paid on a scale that takes into account their education and experience.
At Tuesday’s meeting, school board members asked Grondin to send out an anonymous dropout survey to determine the reasons why students leave the school district.
Grondin said those who wanted to leave the district either wanted to live closer to home or earn more. But she has received more than 10 applications for the four open teaching positions and is confident the district will find highly qualified people.
“We work every day to ensure that we fill these positions with highly qualified people,” said Grondin.
Grondin said that of the 17 people who left the company, two were principals – at Carrie Ricker and Libby-Tozier schools – and that the other person held a key office position, that of director of buildings and grounds.
Jan Lavallee, president of the Regional Schools United 4 Education Association, said other teachers are concerned about staff shortages in the classroom and administration.
“On behalf of the Regional Schools United 4 Education Association, I can say that we have been concerned for several years about teachers and staff leaving,” she said in a statement. “We are also concerned about the constant turnover in administration. All of these vacancies and changes are not good for education and we are committed to working together to best support our students and community.”
The RSU 4 has around 1,200 students at three primary schools, one middle school and one high school.
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