Down a narrow staircase at Presque Isle High School, a cast iron steam boiler towers over visitors in the same place it has sat for the last six decades.
Eleven presidents and tens of thousands of students ago, the boiler — and the high school — were new. They’re not anymore. But replacing the boiler system would cost millions, MSAD 1 Superintendent Ben Greenlaw said. That’s just part of the $40-$50 million in infrastructure investments he estimates the 200,000 square-foot building will need over the next 20 years.
It might be that long before the funding needed to build a new high school is greenlit through the Maine Department of Education’s Major Capital School Construction Program. Greenlaw, aware of the budget crises that have gripped nearby districts in recent years, doesn’t believe MSAD 1 can wait that long.
So earlier this year, he probed an option that has seemed more and more inevitable to education leaders across the state: consolidation. Now Presque Isle High School — Maine’s largest high school north of Old Town — is exploring combining with nearby Caribou and Fort Fairfield high schools to form a single regional high school and tech center.
It’s a plan in its infancy and bears a long list of unknowns, but amid a series of challenges that are forcing districts to consider what the future of public education looks like, exploring a regional school may be the first step toward a potential solution.
“I honestly don’t know if this will come to fruition,” Greenlaw told the Bangor Daily News. “But I think the three communities are at least doing the right thing [and] exploring the opportunity to say ‘Can we do a better job of educating our kids together than we can separately?’”
They’re not alone in considering consolidation. In 2018, three St. John Valley school districts attempted combining, but the plan ultimately failed because they couldn’t agree on a location. And just weeks ago, Dexter and Guilford districts took the first steps toward a regional school.
Presque Isle, Caribou and Fort Fairfield schools submitted the first part of an application in October for a Department of Education pilot program that would fund an integrated, consolidated, grades 9-16 educational facility. It would combine the three high schools and Presque Isle and Caribou’s regional technology centers, which together offer 23 career-focused programs.
Aging infrastructure is a problem that has or will come for each of the high schools in the proposal.
Caribou High School opened in 1966. Fort Fairfield Middle/High School is of a similar age. And in buildings designed to meet much larger student populations, there are empty classrooms amid enrollment drops and a struggle to hire qualified staff.
Presque Isle High School is the oldest, its main wing built in 1948. Its enrollment peaked in 1976 with 1,476 students around the height of the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone that helped push The County’s population above 95,000 in the mid-70s.
In 2025, Aroostook County has less than 67,000 residents, according to estimates, and Presque Isle High School has just 474 students. Its neighbors are facing similar situation.
In presenting the proposal to the MSAD 20 school board in November, Fort Fairfield Superintendent Melanie Blais said the district has 100 fewer students than it had in 2016. That’s one reason the district is exploring the possibility of consolidation, but Blais said she had not been swayed in either direction.
“I cannot even tell you right now as superintendent of schools if I would recommend that we go down this path. It’s just too early in the process,” Blais said at that meeting.
She declined to be interviewed for this story, deferring to Greenlaw.
If constructed, the school would be among the 10 biggest high schools in the state, with an enrollment of around 1,000.
The facility would also contain a higher education center, with professors from the University of Maine at Presque Isle and Northern Maine Community College offering instruction on site in some capacity.
The presidents of both colleges wrote letters of support for the proposal included in the initial application, obtained by the Bangor Daily News.
No name or location has been proposed yet for the school. And at least until the second part of the application is submitted, districts can jump in and out of the proposal at any time. One school already has.
Central Aroostook High School in Mars Hill, which has an enrollment of 103, was included in the initial application, but has since backed out of the plan.
“At any point, a community could say, ‘We’re not interested in proceeding here, this isn’t in our best interest,’” Greenlaw said. “Knowing that communities have that option, I would say, is reassuring to them.”
Greenlaw discussed the proposal with superintendents of every other high school in central Aroostook — Caribou, Fort Fairfield, Central Aroostook in Mars Hill, Ashland, Washburn and Easton. Several, alongside their school board chairs, talked about consolidation at an October meeting in Presque Isle.
Now, with Presque Isle, Caribou and Fort Fairfield still at the table, all three superintendents say it’s time to take the plan to their communities as they proceed.
The second, final part of the application is due on Oct. 31, 2026, and requires answers to some of the questions that currently hang over the proposed school, including how it would be administered.
After that, the project will be scored by state administrators and will have to beat out competing bids to receive state funding in the first place. If selected, Greenlaw expects planning and construction to take another five to 10 years.
“If we get to that point, then we’ve jumped over quite a few hurdles,” he said.
Greenlaw walked a Bangor Daily News reporter through Presque Isle High School Tuesday, highlighting recent investments in the school, including new siding, and pointing out the building’s flaws.
Aside from its 57-year-old primary boiler, the main wing of the building still has its 1948 plumbing. There are ventilation problems and major accessibility issues. The school’s only elevator is in its tech center, on the opposite side of the complex from the main classrooms. For students who are unable to use the stairs, the only other option is a chairlift that takes minutes to set up and obstructs an entire stairway while in use.
MSAD 1 has applied for capital funding from the state to build a new high school in each of the last two rating cycles (2017-18 and 2024-25). In the former, the Department of Education funded nine schools; Presque Isle finished 21st in the priority list. In the latter, the DOE funded two and Presque Isle came in 14th.
“If we’re 14th on the list, we’re looking at 10 or 15 years before we’re even approved and then another probably 5 to 10 once we are approved [for the school to be built],” Greenlaw said. “I’ll be retired by that point. It’s a scary thought.”
