Wiscasset voters on May 27 rejected funding $100,000 for a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) lab for Wiscasset High School.

The proposal lost 17-25 in a written ballot at a lightly attended school budget meeting.

The lab, the night’s only losing item, was outside the $8.4 million budget the school committee had proposed. The committee was giving voters the option to add it to the budget voters will consider at the polls June 9.

Voters passed each piece of the committee’s budget offer, in rounds of hand-raising or written votes. The proposal is down about $1 million from the budget that funded year one of the Wiscasset School Department; it would be about $300,000 more than Wiscasset paid for education the last year the town was in Regional School Unit 12, Interim Superintendent of Schools Lyford Beverage said.

Although the STEM lab will not go into the budget, the high school will go forward with plans to offer students a pair of STEM-themed courses for the next school year, Principal Cheri Towle said after the meeting. One is an introductory STEM course, the other a course on drones, Towle said.

The planned courses have been high-interest among students, Towle said; 35 students have signed up.

Over the next year, further planning could go into STEM programs, which could then be considered for expansion in a future budget, Towle said.

In debate before the vote, proponents of funding the lab focused on the help it would give students in preparing to enter the workforce.

Wiscasset High senior Dylan McMahon said he would have benefited from a STEM lab if the school had had one during his time there. School Committee Chairman Steve Smith said the funding would show support for students and for moving the town's school system forward.

“I think it's critical. The jobs are out there right now, and I don't think we're serving our kids going into the job market,” Smith said.

No one voiced opposition to the lab. The proposal's opponents pointed mostly to its timing. More information and more planning are needed, they said.

Resident Judy Flanagan said she supports the students, but has seen Wiscasset jump into things before.

“I’m not convinced we’ve done the background work we need to,” she said.

“There’s a lot of unknowns,” School Committee Vice Chairman Glen Craig said.

In other decisions, voters agreed to add $33,692 to the proposed school budget to help make over the Wiscasset Middle School playground. The school will serve as an elementary school beginning in the fall. Wiscasset Primary School will close.

The written vote for the extra funding for the playground ran 33-9.

The school committee’s budget offer already included $32,000 toward the playground work. The panel decided to offer voters the chance to increase the funding on the project. The figure that voters passed gets the proposed spending up to $65,692. That amount would buy improvements including a protective surface under all playground equipment, according to information a playground committee presented at an April 30 school committee meeting.

The added funding hikes the proposed budget to $8,460,578.

More than 40 residents, including school committee members, voted during the meeting in the high school’s Stover Auditorium. Smith said he wished the turnout had been higher.

Asked about the many empty seats, Beverage said they indicated that there is little unrest over the budget. He credited school committee members’ handling of the budget process. “They’ve been remarkably open,” he said.

Residents supported spending $3.318,891 on salaries and benefits for regular education teachers and support staff, classroom supplies, equipment, books and repairs; $1,688,538 million for special education; $826,969 for guidance, health, technology and improvements to instruction, library and student assessment; $157,645 for co-curricular and extra-curricular activities; $415,032 in system-level administration; and another $443,852 for school administration.

In the department’s first year as a two-school system, plans call for going from three principals down to two; and for cutting one of three music teaching jobs, department officials have said.