NORRIDGEWOCK —  A dispute between the town and school district will not be settled by the office of Attorney General Aaron M. Frey.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald file

In January, Norridgewock and Maine School Administrative District 54 officials had sought guidance from Frey’s office regarding a state statute that prohibits employees of school district from serving as elected members of school boards.

The town and the district had been at odds for months about whether Valerie Coulombe, a Norridgewock resident elected to the Maine School Administrative District 54 board of directors, can serve on the board while employed by a bus company that contracts with the district to provide student transportation.

Frey said it is not his place to weigh in on the disagreement, according to a letter obtained under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.

“I must decline to provide the advice sought,” Frey wrote in a Feb. 4 letter to Richard LaBelle, Norridgewock’s town manager, and Lynda Quinn, chair of the MSAD 54 board of directors,

“The Office of the Maine Attorney General does not represent either school administrative districts or municipalities in legal matters,” the letter continued. “Instead, your request is more appropriately directed to legal counsel retained to represent the legal interests of Maine School Administrative District 54.”

LaBelle, while sharing Frey’s letter with the Norridgewock Select Board on Wednesday, characterized it as an “unfortunate lack of responsiveness.”

“Not really where either side wanted to be,” LaBelle said. “We wanted a definitive response. We did not get that. It may be something that maybe in the next session we’ll ask our legislators to consider taking up.”

At this point, LaBelle said a November vote of the MSAD 54 board of directors, which effectively allowed Coulombe to continue serving on the board while being employed by the bus transportation contractor, stands.

Quinn, the school board chair, agreed. She said Thursday via telephone she suspected the attorney general’s office would decline to take a side.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re done,” Quinn said.

That vote, by a narrow margin of 476 to 416 in the 23-member school board’s weighted voting system for representatives of the district’s six Skowhegan area towns, decided an “employee” does not mean an individual who provides services through the district as part of a contracted service.

The board’s decision affirmed Norridgewock’s stance on the issue. But the town, which was representing Coulombe through its legal counsel because she is an elected official, pressed the issue to prevent the situation from happening again.

The question of Coulombe’s eligibility to serve on the MSAD 54 board emerged in September.

Coulombe, elected in March 2024 to the board of directors, is employed by Mosher’s Bus Service, a Smithfield company that provides transportation services for the district.

MSAD 54 Superintendent of Schools Jonathan Moody said in a previous interview that the issue about her eligibility was brought to his attention after a parent asked him.

A letter from Norridgewock’s attorney to Moody regarding the issue notes that just over a week before that phone call, Coulombe “wrote up four students due to their repeated poor behavior on her bus. The parent of one of the children confronted her, yelling and threatening her as a result of this incident.”

It is not clear if that parent called Moody inquiring about Coulombe’s position.

But Coulombe said in an interview Thursday she believes the incident is what led to the disagreement about whether she can legally serve on the board of directors. School administration was aware of her employment, and she said no issues arose in the first few months of her term.

“It’s frustrating to me that this started because I was doing my job and disciplined four students,” Coulombe said. “And it all led to a parent making a phone call.”

After consulting with the district’s legal counsel and the Maine School Boards Association about the statutory issue, Moody wrote to Coulombe on Oct. 18, essentially offering Coulombe two options to satisfy state statute: quit her job or resign from the board. A third option would have been to ask Mosher’s for a reassignment to another route, which was not a viable option at the time as the company does not provide transportation services for any other school district on a regular basis.

The statute Moody referenced says, “A member of a school board or spouse of a member may not be an employee in a public school within the jurisdiction of the school board to which the member is elected or in a contract high school or academy located within a supervisory union in which the member is a representative on the union committee.”

An “employee” is defined earlier in the same section as “a person who receives ongoing monetary payment or benefits for personal services performed for a school administrative unit.”

Norridgewock’s town attorney, Mark A. Bower of the Portland law firm Jensen Baird, responded Oct. 24 with his own ultimatum to Moody: either Moody withdraw his “demand” of Coulombe to make a decision or the town would file a legal challenge.

In the meantime, Bower’s firm drafted a complaint and other documents, according to town legal invoices obtained through Maine’s Freedom of Access Act. Nothing, though, was filed in court, LaBelle said.

The school board took its vote on the matter Nov. 7 after discussing the matter in a closed-door executive session.

But unsatisfied with the lack of a full legal argument from the school district and concerned about the issue arising again, the Norridgewock Select Board authorized LaBelle to seek reimbursement of $3,832.50 the town spent on legal services related to the dispute.

Instead, LaBelle dropped the request, as the town and school district agreed to seek clarification from the attorney general’s office on the state statute. LaBelle and Quinn sent a joint letter to Frey’s office Jan. 8, according to a copy obtained in a public records request.

“I didn’t really think it was our responsibility anyway to pay his lawyer bills. I would never have asked him to pay mine,” Quinn said. “But that is neither here nor there. If that’s what he wanted, I play nice. He thought the attorney general should weigh in. I said OK.”

As for Coulombe, she said she was grateful that LaBelle and the town’s attorney went to bat for her. There was never a conflict of interest, Coulombe said.

“I just hope it’s over with, and it’s done with,” Coulombe said, “and we can move on and focus on the budget and where it’s going to go from here.”