1962: Construction of high school and most of current athletic field layout at the high school. At the time, we had boys soccer, field hockey, track, and baseball. Since then, we have added girls soccer, boys and girls lacrosse, softball, football, ultimate frisbee, and unified bocce. The towns have also seen the addition of Patriot Soccer, Patriot Football, and Patriot Lacrosse, which all use the facilities.

1989: Construction of GNG Middle School, with added fields in the “lower bowl,” and integration with the Libby Hill Trail system.

1998: Dunn renovation bond, a spend of $3.1m. At the time, housed grades 3-5, with 5th grade moving to the middle school in 2009/2010. 

2007/8: High school project that created the current cafetorium and aux gym spaces, eliminating some indoor practice space. Leaving us with just one regulation-sized gym. Total spend of $6.1m.

2013: Purchase of the land abutting the high school: 28.46 Acres for $79k. At the same time, won a PEP federal grant, which purchased $1m worth of outdoor gear and equipment, including bikes, kayaks, roller blades, fly fishing gear, etc.

2014: Bond proposal that would have renovated high school chemistry lab, added four classrooms to middle school, and added considerable field space, for $6.6m, with additional question for artificial turf field for $740k. This proposal failed at the ballot box. 

2016: Following a year-long study of facility and athletic fields needs by a board-appointed citizen group led by Dan Cobb, a new pair of bonds were proposed: $3.1m for the high school, middle school, and some other facilities work; $3.85m for fields, new track, and new snack shack and bathrooms. The $3.1m passed, the $3.85m failed. 

The 2016 Fields Plan developed by the ad hoc fields committee

Currently, debt service represents 1.6% of the overall MSAD 15 budget. The average district in Maine has annual debt payments that represent 5.42% of the overall budget. You can see on this graph that we will have very low debt service payments, less than .5% of the budget, after 2027/2028.

Following the last large capital project MSAD 15 introduced in June of 2016 — where the voters agreed to borrow $3 million for a variety of building renovations (including a new chemistry classroom at the high school and four new classrooms at the middle school) but decline to borrow another $3.8 million for new athletic fields and a track (see the Gray results here, to see the ballot questions) — the fields and track remained an issue, with more teams and practices than available space. 

While the district was able to build a track and introduce a new field at the middle school with annual capital funds, the district still had an overuse issue and by 2019, a bond committee was meeting to examine the best way to address those needs and other needs that had been identified for indoor athletic space, indoor theater space, the cafeteria at the high school, and building security. 

You can see an early vision document for the project from 2019 here. As we progressed, we were able to find a federal grant to take care of the security concerns ($600k+ for cameras and new access control at all of our buildings) and buy into a power purchase agreement to get our power mix to roughly 90% renewable and save roughly $20k per year. Partly we had time for this because ... the pandemic happened. 

We were very close to putting forward a bond proposal when our schools shut down in March of 2020. While we might not have made the June ballot, it almost definitely would have been on the November ballot. 

After the pandemic normalized somewhat, we began our strategic planning process, and when we developed and released our new five-year strategic plan in 2022 (which you can find here), we conducted more than 40 focus groups with students, staff, parents, and community members to identify needs and direction for the district. The results were clear:

• High school students identified the cafeteria experience as the worst part of their day. 

• Coaches and athletes, both, identified a lack of training and practice space as a huge hindrance to meeting their goals. 

• Music and arts teachers and students identified a lack of appropriate practice and performance space as a huge hindrance to meeting their goals. 

• The public, parents, staff, and students all agreed that there are not enough good spaces in our district for gathering the community to enjoy student performances of all kinds. 

The MSAD 15 School Board then convened a bond committee made up of board members, staff, and community members to identify the specific needs and create a report (which you can find here). The School Board approved the committee's findings at their March meeting, and then gave the report to engineers from two firms (WRBC for the buildings, Activitas for the fields) and asked for draft documents that addressed the identified needs in as cost-efficient a way as possible. 

The Board, alongside feedback from the bond committee and the public's input at public meetings, worked with the engineers to put together the estimates for the proposal being presented to voters in November.