Wiscasset School Committee member Christopher Hart asked Wiscasset Middle High School Principal Sarah Hubert Jan. 20 if she turned back any requests for the 2026-27 school budget. 

Hubert answered, she thinks the teachers all shop at thrift stores “because that's how they spend money. There's no overspending here. There was nothing I felt like I had to say no to, because they didn't ask for a lot, or if they did ask for something, it's definitely needed.”

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kim Andersson told the committee it was, that night and the next, seeing the budget broken down by the various departments, and Feb. 11, she will present the budget by cost center, as she said the state needs it to be. 

Andersson cautioned committee members, going by the departments’ bottom lines would not show what the draft budget will total, because some items cross departments. She added, her “real work” would start after the Jan. 20 and 21 workshops. To prepare the Feb. 11 presentation, she and staff “will have to get together our revenue sheets and … the calculation of the impact on taxpayers, because as we know, how the budget changes is not a direct correlation to what's going to impact our taxpayers.”

Feb. 11, the committee can adopt the would-be budget offer or have her keep working on it, as she suspects, Andersson said. She hopes the committee will adopt a budget offer in March. She said she needs to get the proposal to the town by April 2, for a special town meeting April 29 or May 6, preferably April 29, because “it gives us more time to have an approved budget and get the word out” to go vote in the budget validation referendum June 9.

“And if that budget gets adopted that day, then we're all smooth sailing. We're good to go. If it doesn't … then we need to go back and do it again,” Andersson continued. 

That happened last year. According to Wiscasset Newspaper files, the budget offer lost in June, 206-281; a second one, asking $152,151 less of local taxpayers, passed Sept. 4, 123-121.

Starting to note the steps for a second budget offer should that happen again, Andersson said: “I don't want to spend too much time thinking about that because it's, I don't know, call me superstitious, but it's just let's not spend a lot of time thinking about it not passing, but we're familiar with this process because we did it last summer.”

Among items discussed over the two nights of workshops, district officials said insurance has so far been figured in as having a 13% hike across all departments; and support staff and teacher contracts are being negotiated. So, unlike the past three years, "next year's salary scale is not set yet," Andersson told the committee.

"So we have budgeted a 5% increase for all salaries across the board, but it maybe isn't going to be that," and she might suggest reducing the increase, she said. "I just said put in 5 so we can see what it looks like. It looks like too much. So when I come back on Feb. 11, that's probably going to be a lower estimate."