“What we’ve done with this new school district is transcended traditional municipal boundaries to better the education of our children. This new RSU is a significant landmark that will provide a world-class education to our kids. … We owe a debt of gratitude to the school districts, the school boards of the towns, who have passed to us such examples of education excellence. And I assure them we will keep their legacy of excellence.”

— William Shuttleworth, then superintendent, during the first meeting of the Regional School Unit 1 board on July 1, 2008

New questions about how to interpret the unique local cost-sharing formula included in the LD 910 legislation that created Regional School Unit 1 pose the first critical test of the district’s solidarity.

Such a moment was inevitable, so how school officials and municipal leaders from the district’s five communities handle the challenge will provide students with key lessons in civics and problem-solving.

It also will determine whether folks in Arrowsic, Bath, Phippsburg, West Bath and Woolwich will be able to concentrate on education in the coming years — or be distracted by administrative headaches, drawn-out negotiations and legal maneuvers that siphon energy and dollars away from the classroom.

Representatives of the regional school district hope to meet with municipal officials next week to seek common ground on how to deal with the new legal interpretation. That’s a good start.

A positive next step would be for all parties to commit to keeping RSU 1 intact, building upon past collaboration to overcome this hurdle and strengthen the district as a whole.

Establishing the foundation that upcoming discussions will focus on how to make RSU 1 work better — rather than possibly dismantling the district — will reaffirm the collaborative tone that converted a rocky decades-long courtship into the marriage of the Bath School Department and School Union 47 in 2008.

Talk of pulling out of the district won’t benefit anyone. Whatever shortterm savings a municipality might realize would disappear quickly. The benefits of splitting costs five ways would be lost, and the quality of education would inevitably suffer as a result.

Something as revolutionary as RSU 1, by design, demands fine-tuning. With no baseline, it’s reasonable to expect that details of the district’s unique costsharing and representation models would need to be tweaked.

That time has come.

As work to refine RSU 1 moves forward, a statement from school board chairman Tim Harkins when he was elected to the first RSU 1 board in January 2008 takes on added meaning.

“I think the key is that this new board must be willing to collaborate,” he said. “We must have respect for and trust each other and above all be willing to listen to the needs of the communities and the public.”

Serious conversations about how to share RSU 1’s local expenditures fairly must occur. Consideration of such factors as cost-per-pupil variations from community to community, transportation and facilities’ needs should figure prominently in any discussions among school and municipal leaders.

Above all, the focus must stay on achieving excellence in education.

A shared vision — “a greater vision,” in Shuttleworth’s words upon election of the first RSU 1 board — for how residents of the five communities want their children educated must guide the deliberations. Otherwise, the lofty rhetoric and talk of educational excellence four years ago will be relegated to the, sadly, too-long list of assignments that today’s adults failed and for which our children will pay.

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