Understanding Maine’s Alternative Organizational Structures (AOS) - An Edgecomb Guide
In the complex world of Maine’s public education governance, Alternative Organizational Structures (AOS) represent a middle ground between fully independent towns and full school district consolidation. Unlike a traditional school district such as a Regional School Unit (RSU), where multiple towns give up local governance and budgets to form a single unified district, an AOS allows towns to retain their own school boards and budgets while pooling together for shared administrative services.
Under Maine law, an AOS is formed when two or more school administrative units agree to a reorganization plan that consolidates certain functions such as system administration, special education administration, transportation oversight, and business operations into one shared structure. The statute governing this process outlines that the plan must include an interlocal agreement for cooperation and specify how the AOS budget will be proposed and approved.
Instead of a single school board with authority over all member towns, AOS governance is handled by an AOS school committee made up of representatives from each member entity’s school board. The cost of operating the AOS central office is shared among member towns based on formulas laid out in negotiated plans, often taking into account pupil counts, budget sizes, or other factors agreed upon by the members.
Edgecomb is a part of AOS 98, forming an agreement with 4 other towns (Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, Southport and Georgetown) to share administrative costs to the benefit of each town.
How an AOS Functions in Practice
On the ground, an AOS looks like a central office that serves multiple separately governed schools. Each town retains control over its own local decisions, from school budgets to personnel within their schools, while the AOS central office handles shared services that would be duplicated if each town tried to run them separately.
Take, for example, Alternative Organizational Structure #94, which comprises MSAD #46 (Dexter area), the Harmony School Department, and the Athens Community School. While each retains its own identity and local board, they share a central superintendent and office functions that coordinate administrative tasks for all three.
This structure is intended to achieve economies of scale: rather than each small district hiring its own superintendent, business manager, and specialists for special education and transportation, an AOS central office performs those roles for all members. For small rural towns with limited tax bases and staff, this can mean access to expertise they might otherwise struggle to afford.
The Pros: Why Some Towns Choose an AOS
1. Preserving Local Control While Reducing Duplication:
One of the key attractions of the AOS model is that towns don’t lose local governance. Each community keeps its own school board and local budget, which can feel more democratic and responsive to residents’ preferences than full consolidation. It’s a compromise for places that resisted merging into larger RSUs but still want some efficiencies.
2. Cost Sharing of Administrative Services:
Pooling administrative functions can lower overall costs. Small districts often face high per-pupil costs for superintendents and business services — costs that can be shared across member towns in an AOS. The combined central office also allows for streamlined payroll, auditing, and transportation planning that might be more professionally managed than in tiny individual offices.
3. Access to Professional Expertise:
Professional-level administrators, special education coordinators, and business managers can serve multiple small communities, ensuring consistent compliance with state and federal requirements in areas like special education law and finance.
The Cons: Challenges and Central Office Stress
Despite its benefits, the AOS model is not without significant drawbacks, many of which stem from the tension between shared services and independent governance.
1. Central Office Burden:
A recurring theme from superintendents and administrators in Maine is that running an AOS can be extraordinarily complex and stressful. Because each member town has its own school board, a superintendent must report to and satisfy multiple boards with potentially conflicting priorities. In some reported cases, administrators have described it as “hell for central offices” because they have to prepare reports, budgets, and proposals tailored to different board expectations, rather than receiving unified direction. In AOS 98 this was recently highlighted in the discussion surrounding the need for an assistant superintendent. While ultimately the AOS board moved away from this proposal, it did not do so lightly due to the effect that this stress has on the central office.
2. Inconsistent Decision‑Making:
Because local boards maintain control over their own budgets and operations, the potential for uneven policy application and conflicting strategic goals is high. One town might want to innovate or cut programs, while another might prioritize maintenance or expansion, making unified planning difficult.
3. Limited Real Savings on Educational Services:
While administrative costs can be shared, there’s often limited opportunity to combine classroom services, teachers, or curricula without full consolidation. Critics argue this can mean that true efficiencies, such as consolidating underutilized schools, never materialize.
AOS Dissolutions and What They Reveal
Since the initial wave of school restructuring stemming from Maine’s 2007 consolidation law, multiple AOSs have formed, but several have subsequently dissolved such as AOS 48 (Bancroft/Orient) and AOS 62 (Madawaska/Grand Isle) in the early 2010s, and into the late 2010s AOS 97 (Fayette/Winthrop) and AOS 99 (Bridgewater/Mars Hill).
Perhaps the most prominent example was AOS 92 (Kennebec Valley Consolidated Schools), a structure that included the cities of Waterville and Winslow and the town of Vassalboro. After nearly a decade, voters in all three member communities opted in 2018 to dissolve that AOS and return to separate school administrative units. School leaders cited weak governance structure and the strain placed on administrators, who were stretched thin overseeing three separate systems simultaneously, as key reasons for dissolution.
These dissolutions highlight an important reality: while shared administration can work in theory, if local entities don’t feel the model delivers clarity, savings, or improved educational outcomes, they may eventually decide that the compromise isn’t worth the cost in complexity and frustration.
Thoughts to Consider
Maine’s Alternative Organizational Structures represent a thoughtful, if imperfect, attempt to strike a balance between small‑town autonomy and the benefits of shared administrative resources. For some communities, AOSs offer a viable way to hold onto local decision‑making power while tapping into shared expertise and lowering certain administrative costs. For others, the cost of managing complex governance, multiple boards, competing priorities, and stretched central offices, has proved too high, leading to dissolutions and a return to independent administration.
As Maine continues to adapt its educational governance landscape, the story of AOS models underscores the ongoing tension between local control, cost efficiency, and effective administration, a challenge familiar to many rural education systems across the country.
