Maine Yankee's closure more than a decade and a half ago is still impacting Wiscasset and its schools, Wiscasset High School administrators said May 5.

Assistant Principal Susan Poppish described a town that went from white collar to blue collar, tried to make frugal choices to stay out of debt, then lost its sense of local control when it merged with seven other towns into Regional School Unit 12.

“There were some people in town for whom that was very galling,” she said.

Poppish was sharing Wiscasset's story with a panel evaluating the school for reaccreditation with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Endorsement helps a school's graduates get into competitive colleges, school officials said. Sunday's presentation in the darkened school library kicked off four days of meetings and other work.

Teachers and administrators outlined steps the school has been taking to produce responsible citizens who think critically and have other traits employers value.

Despite drops in enrollment and funding, the high school has advanced placement classes and a competitive offering of extra-curricular activities, Poppish said.

The smaller student population has some advantages. Students feel known, and there's a culture of laughter at WHS, Principal Deb Taylor said. “I've been told to quiet down in the hallway, actually,” she told the visiting panel.

She and Poppish, a past WHS principal, got into the history behind the school's enrollment free fall from 389 students a decade ago to 207 today.

Choices Wiscasset made when the nuclear power plant closed limited the town's options years later, when the state told towns to consolidate for education, Poppish said.

Faced with losing the big economic base that Maine Yankee represented, Wiscasset began limiting the number of out-of-town, tuition students it would educate, she said.

The idea was to save money, but it ultimately cost the town a chance to partner with Dresden when consolidation came along. By then, Dresden had a contract that sent its students to Hall-Dale High School, WHS administrators said.

Wiscasset now finds itself in a school district that spans 50 miles and sends students to WHS after other schools have kicked them out. Those students' shortfalls in skills and credits drive up the school's dropout rate,  the administrators continued.

Students who enter WHS as freshmen graduate at a higher rate.

The school has a committee working hard to lower the dropout rate, administrators said. Flexible scheduling and new options for earning credits are planned to help support at-risk students.

Reaccreditation happens every 10 years. Wiscasset High's is up for renewal this year.

RSU 12 representative Gene Stover of Wiscasset has witnessed the process many times. He began teaching at the high school's predecessor on Federal Street in 1953, when it had 90 students, he said.

Waiting to watch from the back row Sunday, Stover, who served as assistant principal at the current school building for about 25 years, said he was quite confident WHS will keep its accreditation. “They've got a great faculty and good administrators. They'll have everything right down pat,” he said.

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or sjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com.