March 31, 2023 State Board of Education School Construction Committee Meeting

  Superintendent Sirois went down to Augusta to attend the March 31 State Board School Construction Committee meeting.  Board directors Gerard Castonguay, Lisa Bernier, and Josh Desjardin also attended the meeting via Zoom.  In attendance for the same purpose were representatives from RSU1 which also had a school fire on June 10, 2022, and needed to relocate their PreK - 2 population to another school location for this school year. 

During this time, both RSU1 Superintendent Patrick Manuel and MSAD33 were able to ask questions of the school construction committee, specific to Emergency projects, and how (and when) were would be able to be placed on such a construction list.  

Chair Desjardins was able to share with us 7 schools over the past 43 years that have had school fires, the last being in Litchfield in 1996.  In each of these instances, schools were either rebuilt or the damaged sections were replaced though the Emergency Projects provision under the rules.  It was Desjardins' opinion at that time that the RSU1 and MSAD33 projects should also be considered for replacement.

In order to organize all of the facts around each fire, including, but not limited to insurance, placement on priority lists, and other factors, Chair Desjardins informed the school construction committee she would be working on a "Fact Sheet" to help better prepare the state board to make a detmerination.  The first draft of the fact sheet would be reviewed at the April school construction committee meeting. 

The following are the minutes from that meeting:

Click here to view the minutes from the March 31 school construction committee meeting.