The Harvard School Committee plans to decide at or before its April 9 meeting whether or not to further pursue the possibility of an administrative union with the neighboring Boxborough district. Under this plan, Harvard and Boxborough would share a superintendent and five other administrative positions.

Harvard interim Superintendent Joe Connelly told the School Committee Monday that Boxborough is requesting Harvard's answer before Boxborough's mid-April Town Meeting. That town is concurrently considering a union with Harvard, to its west, as well as a regionalization scheme with Acton, to the east, and plans to decide on one or the other or neither at its Town Meeting.

Currently, Boxborough high schoolers attend Acton Boxborough Regional High School, while the town maintains its own K-6 program.

Connelly, along with School Committee members Kirsten Wright and Patty Wenger have assembled a school union subcommittee of 12, including teachers, members of the school councils, and community members. The group is a "fact finding" subcommittee, Connelly said. Its mission is not to make a recommendation one way or the other, but to provide to the School Committee an in-depth report on how a school union might work and the effect it would have on Harvard's schools.

The committee has already generated close to 100 questions, most of which have been placed in one of five categories, Connelly said: logistics, staffing implications, cost impacts/cost benefits, education benefits and disadvantages, and job specifications and how jobs might change.

The committee has also made plans to meet with Tri-Town School Union Superintendent Bernie Creeden to ask about how that union model has been working for the towns of Boxford, Middleton, and Topsfield, Connelly said.

The school union subcommittee intends to deliver its final report to the School Committee by the School Committee's second meeting in March, Connelly said. School Committee Chairman Keith Cheveralls said the committee should plan on a public hearing on the issue before making a decision on April 9.

Even if the School Committee decides in April to continue pursuing the union, it would still be a "non-binding decision," Cheveralls said.

"By saying, in effect, 'yes,' if that's where the analysis leads us, we're still not deciding to unionize at that time," Cheveralls said. "To come to the final terms and conditions of what a union agreement would look like, you wouldn't probably do that until [fiscal year 2014]."

In January, the School Committee voted to bring Connelly back next year on a part-time (though nearly full-time) basis, to continue talks with Boxborough, and to launch a search for a full-time superintendent in October.

A subcommittee report in December said that the union model could save Harvard between about $199,000 and $358,000, depending on how expenses are apportioned between the districts. Connelly said Monday that Boxborough has taken the possibility of sharing a director of facilities off the table because Boxborough has already decided to share its facilities director with its department of public works.