Weeks after residents in the Readfield-area school district learned their popular middle school principal won’t be back for the coming school year, they lined up Wednesday in the Maranacook Community Middle School at a special school meeting to find out why.

Neither Shawn Roderick, chairman of the Regional School Unit board of directors, nor Jay Charette, district superintendent, answered any questions posed to them during the meeting in the school’s cafeteria, which lasted more than an hour and a half. 

Residents were also surprised to learn that the district now has a deputy superintendent; Karen Smith, the director of curriculum, has been given additional duties.

But the focus of comments was Maranacook Community Middle School Principal Rick Sirois who resigned in early August when Charette declined to seek a renewal to a waiver that allowed Sirois to serve as principal with his teaching degree as he actively worked toward his principal’s certification. 

“A mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains,” Chip Jones said from the podium. “The superior teacher demonstrates and the great teachers inspire. You lost one of those.”

Jones and about a dozen parents, students and teachers, asked questions about the dismissed principal that the community has rallied behind.

Others demanded to know how this situation reached the point where more than 800 people signed a petition to reinstate Sirois and more than 300 people signed a different petition to remove Charette as superintendent. And, they wanted to know, why was the school board not involved in the decision? 

“The superintendent serves at the will of the school board and for this decision to be made without the school board’s knowledge is a travesty,” Jones said. “I know this because I reached out to some school board members who had no idea what was going on. That is horrible. Really horrible,” Jones said.

He said Charette is the board’s only employee and urged board members to review their role in overseeing his decisions.

Roderick said the board might issue answers to their questions, but he is going on vacation over the next week and does not plan to do school board-related tasks. Regardless of the board’s next steps, he urged the public to attend the next meeting on Sept. 3.

It is unclear how much the school board knew about the decision not to renew Sirois’ waiver or why the decision was made. Charette said previously that it is a personnel issue, and cannot be discussed publicly. Attempts to reach Charette and Roderick for comment on Thursday were not immediately successful.

During the meeting, Charette announced Smith’s new position.

Typically, during the school year, school boards accept resignations as well as announce new hires during public meetings. But in the summer, school boards routinely delegate those tasks  to the superintendent along with the board’s chairperson. The Readfield-area school board did that at its June meeting. 

To fill the vacancy at the middle school, Michelle LaForge, principal of Maranacook Community High School, and Chris Gosselin, assistant principal of the middle school, will rotate the principal duties until mid-November when the district will post the principal job, Charette said.

Some community members expressed concern over the workload increase for LaForge and Gosselin, while others hope the administrative changes do not lead to more staff turnover. 

“If we strip away what makes us special, we become another generic school,” Amy Tucker, a resident and teacher at Maranacook Middle School, said. 

Most of all, the community rallied around Sirois, who started in the district as a teacher and became principal in 2022.

Nearly every person who spoke called him an amazing educator and mentioned that it is a huge loss for the school district.

Ella Stevens, a former student and advisee of Sirois who has graduated from high school, said he changed her life and was there for her during a difficult time in middle school. The action made by the administration has undermined her trust in the school district, she said.

“I don’t mean this in any disrespect, but my trust is not there,” Stevens said. “My trust is there for Rick (Sirois). Trust is earned and he earned that. If I had to have a one-on-one conversation with the 14-members of the school board, I wonder how many people would say it was the right decision to accept his resignation. Could you tell me why? I would hope that outside of the room, you could have a conversation with me. I went here, I had him as an advisor and he changed my life. You’d tell me that was the right decision to take him out of the district?”