Trenton School Committee has not yet voted to support, or not support, reorganization.

Shaun Farrar and Carrie Jones

Sep 18, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Coastal Kayaking Tours and Acadia Bike.

---

TRENTON—During the Trenton Select Board’s September 15 meeting, during which it heard a school reorganization presentation from AOS 91 Superintendent Michael Zboray, select Board Member Susan Sargent wanted to know what would happen to the Trenton Elementary School if it closed under the administration of an RSU.

“The RSU Board cannot unilaterally close a school, but the school can be voted on to be closed. What happens to the property if that happens?” Sargent asked.

Zboray said, “It goes back to the town then.”

Under the proposed RSU plan, the RSU assumes ownership of the school’s physical buildings and real property. The RSU also assumes all maintenance and upkeep and associated costs.

One of the finer points about the potential plan is that each school would no longer belong to its town, but to the RSU as a whole. This includes the land that the school is on, not just the building, which hasn’t been clear to some officials in different towns.

In a July 15 email to School Superintendent Micheal Zboray, the Bar Harbor Story had confirmed with Zboray that the parcels (land) would also convey.

The town would have a voice if the RSU suggested closing the school—as a school—entirely.

This is a component of the plan that can’t be changed.

”By state statute, when forming an RSU, the new school district takes over ownership of the schools. This lets the new governing body properly care for the buildings,” Zboray confirmed in an email.

---

Zboray was at the Select Board meeting to request that it place the referendum question regarding reorganization of AOS 91 into an RSU on the ballot for November 3.

According to Zboray, some of the benefits of the plan are that it would “create better education for all our students, empower educators and teachers with the resources and professional support that they need.”

“It makes financial sense when you look at how the pre-k through 12 education is delivered and how disparate the amount of money that our communities are paying for virtually the same education,” Zboray said, adding that the plan would also help with “transportation and efficiencies.”

“Some of the problems that we are trying to solve are specialized programs gaps,” said Zboray, “The idea is to create equal educational access so that students, no matter what school they are in, will be better prepared when they reach the high school” no matter the resources, or lack thereof, in a particular community.

There is no plan for a district middle school at this time under the reorganization plan presented for the November 3 vote. If that was to occur, it would be another step after reorganization was approved and enacted.

---

GOVERNANCE

If the reorganization is approved, the governing body of the new RSU becomes a 15-member board where people vote for other town’s board members. That is the board with the power to govern. The members of the board will be residents of the town they represent, but the voting will be at large. This means that the names of candidates for the board, no matter what town they represent, will be on every towns’ ballot to be voted on. They will not be voted on solely by other members of the town they represent.

Votes on budgets will be at the district level and separate from traditional town meeting’s budget developments and votes.

But there would also be local school advisory councils—separate from the governing board—that provide input on the hiring process for school administration hires. These advisory councils will no longer have the decision making powers that individual school boards currently have.

According to Zboray in an email, “The RPC could have used several methods to form the board. They chose the at-large citizen model because it protects smaller communities from having less of a vote than in a weighted model.”

Those other models included, as explained by Zboray:

• Method A (Subdistrict Representation): “Directors represent specific subdistricts, which should ideally be whole municipalities or divided into equally populated areas with separate voting places.” [1]
• “Method B (Weighted Votes): “A total of 1,000 votes is divided among all board members, where each director’s voting power matches their municipality’s share of the total RSU population.“ [1, 2]
• Method C (At-Large Voting): “Directors are elected at-large by all the voters across the entire regional school unit”. [1, 2]

---

DEBT ASSUMPTION

All existing capital debt would be shared amongst the RSU. Any new capital debt, like if Tremont built a new school building, will be shared across the RSU. The RSU will also assume all existing operational debt.

This means that if approved by voters, the new RSU will be taking on Bar Harbor’s new school building debt and Mount Desert’s current renovations debt. These debts will be spread across all of the town’s in the RSU for repayment.

Any new debt, such as a new school building in Tremont or renovations and repairs in Trenton or Southwest Harbor schools would also be spread across all of the towns in the RSU for repayment.

---

COST SHARING AND TAX FAIRNESS

“Trenton pays quite a bit for the cost of its pre-k through 12 education, whereas Mount Desert pays a lot less,” Zboray said.

The RSU funding formula would be the same as the current high school formula which is 67% valuation and 33% enrollment in order to try to find a funding formula that is fair to taxpayers across the district.

The valuation used is an average of the past three years valuations to help avoid any anomaly years.

For four of the member towns this represents an increase in taxes, but for the other four towns this represents a projected reduction in education related taxes.

According to the planning committee’s projections, for a Trenton property owner with a home with an assessed value of $450,000 and assuming all of the current debt from both Bar Harbor and Mount Desert, a Trenton tax payers education related taxes would go down by $958 per year.

For every $100,000 of valuation that is a projected decrease of $213.

---

FUNDS AND RESERVES

All pre-k through 8 bus and building reserves will be absorbed by the RSU and combined into one reserve. The RSU would also have a special education reserve for all of the member towns but existing special education reserves that currently belong to individual towns would be returned to those towns because of an existing AOS special education reserve that is already quite robust according to Zboray.

The high school reserve will remain separate and be its own capital improvement reserve for high school purposes only.

---

REFERENDUM SCENARIOS

If the referendum passes, the RSU would become effective July 1, 2028 after a one-year transition period.

In order for the referendum to pass, Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Tremont, and Trenton all would need to pass it. If one of these towns does not pass the referendum, it does not pass.

The outer islands do not need to pass the referendum for it to pass and there are two different scenarios, as shown below, if one or more outer islands does not pass it.

Member John Bennett motioned that “the town hold a special town meeting on November 3 to vote for the reorganization plan.”

There was also a discussion about holding a public hearing regarding the reorganization vote at the Select Board’s October 13 meeting.

Select Board Chair Fred Ehrlenbach asked, “What is the position of the school committee?”

Chair Ehrlenbach then asked School Committee Chairman Aaron Brown, who was in attendance at the meeting, if the school committee is recommending approval of the reorganization vote.

Zboray responded with a “yes,” but no verbal response was heard from Brown over a Zoom broadcast.

Zboray then said that the Trenton School Committee has not actually voted on the matter yet.

Bennett’s motion to place the referendum question on the ballot was passed by the Select Board.

---

CISTERN BID REVISION

Also during the September 15 meeting, Fire Chief Steve Heckman informed the Select Board on how he had revised the request for proposals (RFPs )for a new water supply cistern on the Bayside Road that had recently come back quite a bit higher than expected.

Heckman said that he had revised the draft for the cistern project and made it more narrow in scope. According to Chief Heckman, the contractors that had submitted bids previously said that one of the reasons that the prices were so high was due to the amount of fill required for the lot to make it possible for fire apparatus to drive in and turn around.

Chief Heckman has revised the RFP so that it would be more of a straight drive in without a turnaround area to see how much that reduces the bid prices and will resubmit the RFP’s.

The town did not get awarded the Community Resilience Grant that it had applied for which would have helped finance a new cistern at the industrial park or helped with cost overruns for the Bayside Road cistern this round of awards, Chief Heckman told the Select Board.

---

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art.

---

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

All slides used in the article are from the Reorganization Committee’s “A Unified Future” slide deck that can be viewed here.

---

HELP SUPPORT THE BAR HARBOR STORY

When we started The Bar Harbor Story, we didn’t know if anyone would read it. But you showed up. You shared. You sent tips. Now—over 400,000 views every month later—it’s clear: people here care about their community and each other.

We’ve kept everything free because news should never be out of reach, but every one of our stories takes time to write, and your support keeps The Bar Harbor Story going.

If you value our work, please consider a paid subscription, a founding membership, or a sponsorship.

It truly helps us cover one more meeting, tell one more story, shine one more light.

Even $5 a month makes a difference. Click here to become a one-time supporter now.

Thank you so much for being here.

Founding member information can be found here.

Have questions about sponsorships? Just send Shaun an email at sfarrar86@gmail.com, he’d love to hear from you.