Wiscasset Police Chief Troy Cline expressed confidence March 26 that his department will get to keep its resource officer for the town’s schools. He couldn’t be happier with how the new position and the man in it, Officer Perry Hatch, are working out this school year, Cline told the Wiscasset School Committee.

The job, created in a 91-76 town vote in 2014, is in Cline’s next proposed budget.

“I hear rumblings that it’s not going to go through .... We’ll let the town decide that,” he said. “I’ve got people, too, and I’m pretty sure I can get it to go through.”

“I know you’re a go-getter, so I think you’re all set,” Committee Vice Chairman Glen Craig said later in the discussion at Wiscasset High School, where Hatch spends much of his work day. The position has involved all three schools and will involve both remaining ones after Wiscasset Primary School closes, Cline said.

Cutting a school doesn’t cut the number of students, so consolidation will not lessen the need for a resource officer, he said.

Craig and others at the meeting in the high school library made positive comments. Wiscasset High Principal Cheri Towle said that, just months into the program, some parents are calling to ask to speak directly to Hatch about their family issues; Hatch has also become a male role model for students who don’t have one at home, she said.

“If he’s not here next year, I really am concerned about some of those students,” Towle said. “I can’t take that relationship away from the kids.”

Wiscasset Primary Principal Mona Schlein, who will move with students and staff to the middle school, said Hatch is very patient with students.

“I so hope that whatever it takes to see this (program) continue will happen,” Schlein said.

Interim Superintendent of Schools Lyford Beverage praised the cooperation he said the school department receives from the police department.

So far this school year, the police department has made nine arrests and handled nearly 200 calls for service at Wiscasset’s three schools and the town’s parks and recreation building, according to Cline’s handout to the committee.

Those included possible assaults, drug-related incidents, thefts, along with alarms, medical calls and other matters such as people sharing information with police — something that’s happening more now that Hatch is in the schools, Cline said.

Hatch also arranged a field trip for nine students to tour the state police academy, and has invited a canine officer and other representatives of law enforcement agencies to speak at the high school, Cline said.

Wiscasset selectmen and the Wiscasset Budget Committee will look at Cline’s proposed budget and other departments’ on Saturday, April 4. The workshop at the municipal building starts at 8 a.m.

Steps continue toward

school closure

The Maine Department of Education has given its OK to the town’s plan for educating students displaced when the primary school closes, Beverage said. Those grades are moving to the middle school. Beverage called the state’s approval of the plan another hurdle the town no longer faces in the closure process.

Beverage said he and Town Manager Marian Anderson have been looking at how to handle insurance costs for the primary school. The school department may continue to cover those costs over the summer, he said.