Two South Portland School Board members could be subject to a recall election this summer. 

Ali AL Dhamen, a registered voter in South Portland, filed affidavits to recall School Board Chair Rosemarie De Angelis and Vice Chair Adrian Dowling last Thursday, days after the board voted to close James O. Kaler Elementary School and reconfigure the remaining four elementary schools by grade levels. 

For a recall, each petition must be returned to the city within 45 days with signatures from at least 10% of registered voters based on the last municipal election. If the petition meets the threshold, the recall election could occur at the municipal election on June 9, depending on city council discretion.

In the recall petitions, AL Dhamen said the school board members’ support for grade-level reconfiguration “overrides unanimous opposition expressed by parents and community members at public workshops, disrupts established neighborhood community schools, forces unnecessary transitions and longer busing for young children and prioritizes demographic balancing and short-term budget savings over the educational stability and well-being of students and families.”

Dowling, who announced on Tuesday that he was resigning immediately, said that he voted in compliance with state law and school department policy.

“Recalling an elected official based solely on a difference of opinion is almost certainly not what South Portland’s founders had in mind when they wrote the city charter,” Dowling said. “If that precedent is set, no elected official in this community will be able to serve for more than a month or two, because there have always been disagreements and there always will be.”

Many parents and community members say they felt blindsided and devastated by the decision to close Kaler and reconfigure the remaining elementary schools, taking to Facebook and lining up at meetings to comment.

The school district presented elementary school reconfiguration as a cost-saving solution at budget workshops during the past few months in the midst of a grisly budget season.

The school district had to cut about $8.4 million from its proposed budget to hold the tax increase to 6%, the higher end of what school board members and city councilors have recommended, according to Assistant Superintendent Johanna Prince.

The district first recommended closing Waldo T. Skillin Elementary School because it would be the most cost-effective, but a majority of school board members said they would not shutter the city’s most diverse elementary school. 

The district came back with a proposal a month ago to close Helena H. Dyer Elementary School and modify the attendance zones for the remaining four schools to balance school size.

Closing either Dyer or Kaler would result in similar savings —  $3.1 million for this year’s budget and $16.4 million over the next five years, according to initial research presented at a budget workshop last month.

In the reconfiguration plan, Dyer and Dora L. Small elementary schools will serve pre-kindergarten through first grade, and Frank I. Brown and Skillin elementary schools will house second through fourth grades, relocating hundreds of students, not just the 164 who currently attend Kaler.

Class sizes will increase for all grade levels, and some staff members will have to move schools.

The school district will hold meetings at each of the elementary schools for staff and families within the next two weeks to hear feedback and questions about the reconfiguration process.