LIVERMORE FALLS — Nearly 50 teachers in RSU 73 attended Thursday’s board board meeting to protest the lack of a contract after nearly two years of negotiations.

RSU 73 Education Associatoin President Chris Ellingwood said educators have been working without a contract since the end of August 2012. Negotiations began about 22 months ago, followed by mediation and fact-finding. Both sides will soon enter arbitration.

Most teachers at the meeting were garbed in green T-shirts that advocated excellent education for all children. Many carried signs, some of which called for respect and others for a contract.

Robin Miller, a math teacher at Spruce Mountain High School in Livermore Falls, read a statement calling for new leadership, and saying teachers had little to do with the process that resulted in merging the Jay School Department and RSU 36 in Livermore and Livermore Falls two years ago.

“It is time to be out with the old and in with the new who will work with the professional staff whom you entrust to educate the children of the community,” she said to a round of applause.

Miller said that assuming that consolidation was successful because the middle schools from each town were together was incorrect.

“I think looking at the disciplinary issues amongst this year’s freshman class, as well as the number of students in remedial math, might serve as indicators that there are still problems,” she said. “It also makes assumptions that we are under a districtwide contract. We are not.”

She also said, “Administration seems to expect its teachers, whose advice they neither seek nor heed, who are treated more as liabilities than assets … to make this move happen.”

A request by middle school secretary Kimberly Cook to have the board reconsider its vote to accept her resignation, for purposes of retirement, was denied.

Many teachers disagreed with the board’s decision.

School board Chairwoman Denise Rodzen said because no board member Thursday night brought up the issue for another vote Thursday night, Cook would not be reinstated.

Middle school Principal Scott Albert said the board doesn’t have to vote to allow a retirement, so he questioned why they couldn’t reinstate her.

Sally Speich, a member of the RSU 73 Education Association, said the union would consider the board’s decision Thursday an involuntary termination.