By Suzanne Hodgson

Staff Writer

Even after she steps down leading the local school board, Maureen King will help set the agenda for how local children are educated.

After more than six years overseeing change through consolidation, RSU 21 School Board Chairman Maureen King of Kennebunkport said the decision came once she knew she would be president of the Maine School Board Association in Augusta, which promotes cooperation among local school boards.

King said she did not want the new position to interfere with her commitments closer to home.

“It’s liberating,” King said of being able to step down as chairman. “It’s time for me to step back; we have really amazing people on the board.”

Fellow board members have elected King to the school board every year for the past six years. For five years in a row she was elected to serve as chairman to the School Administrative District 71 encompassing Kennebunk and Kennebunkport. For the first year of the new RSU 21, King was elected as chairman to oversee the transition from two to three communities, which includes Arundel.

“Having kind of shepherded us through the whole consolidation process, I think we’ve done a pretty good job. Are there things we can do better? Yes. Are there things we’ve done extremely well? Yes,” King said. “We set out to bring two very different school districts together. “

King didn’t always agree with consolidation. Before the districts were formally merged and while King was sitting on both the SAD 71 board and the new district’s regional planning committee, she also gathered petition signatures in an effort to nullify the consolidation law.

Another controversial decision King said she now fully supports is the recent vote to buy out the Thornton Academy Middle School contract in 2011. King said the board is honoring the contract by following the rules of the buyout clause.

King, citing potential legal issues, declined to comment on a related vote to allow Arundel students to attend Middle School of the Kennebunks.

King said she is not sad to see her position go to someone else, even as the board ties up loose ends to controversial issues she oversaw from the start, including the Thornton Academy Middle School contract, a strategic five-year plan and upcoming improvements to school facilities in the three towns.

“I’ve learned you can get a lot more done when you’re not chair,” King said. “Sometimes it tends to be a little bit more restrictive. As chair, my job was to represent the whole board and sometimes I had to back off my own positions a little bit. I tend to be pretty outspoken.”

Her outspoken nature has helped the school board bring the International Baccalaureate program to the high school and middle school and helped make the board a more organized and higher-functioning managing body for the district and students, she said.

“To me, educating young people is the most important thing we can do as a society,” King said.

In 1999, the year her daughter graduated kindergarten, King ran for the school board with hopes of improving organizational issues and minimizing micromanaging.

Since that time, she said the board has improved policies for the school district and streamlined the delegation process to a number of committees formed of members of the public, school staff and board members.

King has one year left on her current term as a school board member representing Kennebunkport. Although she said there is debate at home to the contrary, she most likely will run for one more term on the board.

Staff Writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.