Work Begins Again To Look Into Costs and Possibilities for Potential Island-wide (or Two Island-wide) Middle Schools
Sep 10, 2025
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BAR HARBOR—A possible island-wide middle school is being looked at once again. It’s a continuation of work done over five years ago and more recently during the Mount Desert Island region’s potential move toward reorganization.
During its meeting, September 8, the Mount Desert Island Regional School System – AOS 91 School Board board formed a middle school committee again. It would expressly look to creating a combined middle school for the region and potentially other options, such as two schools to house middle graders.
Currently, individual towns each host their own programs for all grades until high school.
Mount Desert Island Regional School System—AOS 91 School Board Chair Jessica Stewart said the committee comes out of the reorganization work.
The first item, if the reorganization plan was passed by voters, would be to work on a middle school, she said.
A potential vote to restructure the school system in the Mount Desert Island region will now likely go before the voters in June 2026. The original timeline had been for June 2025 and then November 2025.
The process began in 2022.
The reorganization plan to one regional school unit (RSU) will likely be revised and not the same as the plan presented to the public in local forums this summer. Those forums stopped after Swan’s Island’s in July. Trenton, Southwest, and Bar Harbor hosted forums. Forums for Great Cranberry, Islesford, Mount Desert, Tremont, and Frenchboro were cancelled.
The original plan would have made Pemetic Elementary School in Southwest Harbor the middle school for all students.
Currently, the new plan calls for another committee to look into creating a middle school for the district and create a recommendation about this.
That committee’s creation occurred September 8 during the AOS meeting.
There’s been so much work to explore middle level options, Stewart said, and they didn’t want to lose that continuity. She added that if the regional school unit passes voters, it would be nice to collect all the middle school education recommendations and continue that work, which would be mandated within the warrant article.
“There’s a lot of energy about an island-wide middle school at a central location like here, and there’s a lot of questions,” she said.
Board member Susan Allen asked to clarify the composition of the committee.
It would likely be a once monthly meeting and it could include non-board members, Stewart said. She added that the committee itself could flesh out the committee membership.
“This committee would be focused on things like what grades it would have and the physical plan,” Stewart said. “It wouldn’t be talking about school board and what it would be in. We’re assuming it would be in the RSU.”
Board member Misha Mytar asked about the committee’s specific charge.
The committee approved the middle school committee, but asked Zboray to pin down the charge a bit.
Board member Marie Yarborough said it sounds like the exact research, recommendations, and solutions that were discussed five years ago. She’d co-chaired that previous 16-member middle school committee at the time.
The committee would look at options, gather information, and report back to the larger AOS committee. Stewart said that costs and logistics would have to be updated for new builds or renovations.
A slide deck on the MDIRSS (Mount Desert Island Regional School System) site explains the rationale and benefits for a combined middle school. It does not list any cons.
That original plan created a governing board for all schools and changing the current AOS (Alternative Organizational Structure) system to a Regional School Unit (RSU). The RSU would employ all staff in the district. It would also create a budget for the system and schools. Each school would have an advisory council.
Back in 2019, the former middle school committee had recommended building a new middle school at the Mount Desert Island High School site, which was considered a “neutral location.” At the time, Dick Broom wrote for the Mount Desert Islander that concerns included getting buy-in from the voters in MDI’s four towns and Trenton, teachers’ concerns about how the new school would potentially affect jobs and students considered to be at risk.
Broom wrote that all administrators and the superintendent discussed the 2019 proposal and “Administrators felt strongly that a single middle school could support student government and greater engagement and provide equitable programming opportunities prior to high school.”
OTHER BUSINESS
The AOS 91 board authorized Zboray to commit to purchase up to 124,000 gallons of #2 heating oil for use at participating AOS #91 Schools at a price of $2.47/gallon for the 2025-2026 heating season.
“It was a penny more than last year,” Zboray said.
A green schools resolution was presented by MDI High School teacher Ruth Poland and Mariah Simpson and staff from A Climate to Thrive and the Green Schools Working Group.
“It’s a very urgent dire problem that the entire world is facing,” Poland said. “We can do what we can to stop what we are responsible for.”
They would make a strategic plan toward the broader goals of the resolution. There was no action scheduled on the plan for this meeting.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
MDI AREA SCHOOLS EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
- Infant/Toddler Coordinator — MDIHS
- Special Education Ed Tech III — MDIHS
- MDIHS Coaching Opportunities
- SUN Special Education Ed Tech — CES
- Bus Driver — MDES
- MTSS Interventionist for SEL and Behavior — Pemetic
- Ed Tech IIIs — Pemetic
- Ed Tech — Tremont
- Art Teacher – 60% – Trenton
- Speech Language Pathologist — Trenton — 2026-2027 School Year
- Part-time Custodian — Ashley Bryan School
- AOS 91 Payroll Finance Manager
- Occupational Therapist
- Transportation Coordinator
- Bus Drivers
- School Nurse Substitutes
- Substitute Teachers
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