SALEM — At least six motions were made or amended and failed to get a majority vote at a MSAD #58 school board meeting on May 21. The issue was regarding a decision for elementary school administration for next year. In the end, each of the four schools would have a head teacher assigned for additional stipends.

Felecia Pease would be the acting principal for the Strong and Phillips schools and Marco Aliberti will be principal for Kingfield and Stratton. Each of the two administrators would no longer be teaching principals.

Stratton administrator Lorrie Aruda will be retiring at the end of this year and Superintendent Quenten Clark will no longer be a part-time principal in Phillips and will assume fulltime responsibilities as superintendent.

Motions or amendments ranged from one principal with the oversight of three schools to having an administrator from Mt. Abram High School be the principal for Stratton on top of his or her duties at MTA.

“To me this is like a one year deal. We just don’t know what’s going to happen,” said director Judy Dill. “We just have too many balls in the air right now when we’re looking at merging schools. We don’t need to be reinventing the wheel so much.”

Members discussed issues like the amount of time administrators will be out of the buildings. “Communication between the schools is very good,” said Clark. “We could set up video conferencing easily for whatever they need to see or whoever they need to talk to. This is possible, but at the same time, maybe I’m just old fashion, I think a physical presence needs to be available and have some human contact if you will,” Clark said.

After much debate, Mary Jane Thorndike’s motion was seconded by Sarah Woods and passed using two principals for four elementary with four head teachers. The cost for additional head teacher stipends would be worked out later, Clark said. The district has successfully used a head teacher in Phillips this year, Clark has noted.