Dirigo High School in Dixfield
DIXFIELD — The Regional School Unit 56 board has elected Barbara Chow of Dixfield as chairwoman and Deborah Mooney of Peru as vice chairwoman, board member Natalie Sneller announced Tuesday.
The decision was made at the school board meeting Monday night.
Chow is also serving on the Regional School Unit 10 board and was a member of the school Withdrawal Committee for Canton, Carthage, Dixfield and Peru before the towns left the district to become RSU 56.
Mooney is a retired former educator at area schools.
The four towns that make up RSU 56 voted to leave RSU 10 late last year. The new district will begin operations July 1.
The board also discussed hiring an interim superintendent.
“We have (around four or five) candidates that have expressed interest in the position and we’ve authorized our Personnel Committee and chairperson to review those applicants over the next week,” Sneller said.
The board hopes to have its recommendation for the interim superintendent position by its next meeting Tuesday.
“(The interim superintendent) would lead the RSU through the start-up phase through the end of June,” she said.
In other business, the board reviewed the school board-authorized transition budget of up to $165,000.
“I think that’s a conservative amount,” Sneller said. “I don’t think that we would need to spend all that, but that’s what we were authorized to spend up to.”
During the meeting, the board also appointed members to six committees: Policy, Finance, Personnel, Buildings and Grounds, Negotiations and Curriculum.
Also of interest, the board voted to authorize Chow to discuss further with RSU 10 a grant opportunity from the state for regionalization and shared projects.
“Through our withdrawal agreement with RSU 10, we are still going to be using Pennacook (Learning Center) services for the next two years,” she said. “So the board last night felt that (Pennacook is) a very valuable resource for this area and if there is an opportunity to renovate that building, if RSU 10 wanted to look at renovating that building on long-term, there may be interest from this district to continue to utilize their services where it makes sense.”
The next RSU 56 board meeting is at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 14, at the Dirigo High School library.