RUMFORD — Positive COVID-19 case counts of students and staff members doubled from 51 to 104 within the Regional School Unit 10 district from the week of Jan. 7 to 14, Superintendent Deb Alden said during the board of directors meeting on Monday. By last Friday, Jan. 21, the positive counts went down to 88, she said.

Alden also noted that “it’s been a struggle” for the district’s schools and that Mountain Valley Middle School in Mexico closed for the day on Jan. 14 because 26% of the staff were out sick. Some teachers from the middle school who were available to teach volunteered to teach at some of the district’s six other schools “where they had low staffing and it was hard getting (substitute teachers). So, that was really helpful,” Alden said.

Also, the board of directors voted 9-2 to continue with a masking mandate for students and staff through March 31. The two directors opposed to the masking mandate were Michelle Casey of Buckfield and Justeen LaPointe of Roxbury.

Voting in favor of the mandate were Directors Jerry Wiley of Buckfield; Gail Parent of Hanover; Chad Culleton of Hartford; Bonnie Child and Peter DeFilipp, both of Mexico; Abbey Rice, Dan Hodge and Greg Buccina, all of Rumford; and Jennifer Adams of Sumner. Directors Bill Hobson of Rumford and Janet Brennick of Mexico were absent.

The district’s masking mandate states that all persons inside the school buildings are required to wear masks unless they are alone in a room or office, except for when they are eating or when they are outside.

The superintendent’s masking mandate recommendation was based on several factors, including that universal masking allows the district to “substantially reduce contact tracing” and that all 16 Maine counties, including Oxford County where the district’s seven schools are located, remain at a high transmission level for COVID-19, Alden said in a memo to the board.

In other business, the board of directors voted to extend Alden’s contract to 2024, following an executive session at the board meeting. Alden was hired as superintendent for RSU 10 in November 2016. Prior to that date, she was the special education director for MSAD 52 in Turner for 15 years.

NEW SCHOOL

In other news, less than a half-dozen community members attended a community forum before the board of directors meeting on Monday regarding a new school building with prospects to be built in the spring of 2023.

Architectural firm Harriman Associates staff Lisa Sawin and Mark Lee gave an overview of the firm’s work to date. Last June, 14 people including seven board directors, approved a straw poll of a proposal to build a school for grades prekindergarten to eight in Mexico. No one opposed moving forward with a new building.

The school is planned at the site of Meroby Elementary and Mountain Valley Middle schools in Mexico. It would house students from Rumford and Mexico elementary schools and the middle school.

Since the straw poll vote on the building in June, Sawin said that the site plan’s location of the new school building has been repositioned to have the building in the middle of the site area. She noted that the center location would allow for the existing track field to be on the most level area on the site and that the already existing school buildings at the location “can still function” while the new building is being built.

Another reason to have the new building in the middle of the designated area was to “get closer to the woods, closer to that connection to nature.

“That was a direct response from the design statement (created by the community) and everything we’re hearing from everyone, because there’s such a strong nature program in this area,” Sawin said.

The district plans to hold another straw poll to gauge the community’s support for the new building’s design “towards the end of February,” Alden said. While working closely with the U.S. Department of Education, which is funding the new building, the district is hoping to bring the vote for the building to its seven towns during referendum voting on June 14, Alden said.

The towns included in the RSU 10 district are Rumford, Mexico, Roxbury, Buckfield, Sumner, Hartford and Hanover.