Unless someone is a school principal, they probably don't know how much state-mandated work comes with the job, Wiscasset's interim superintendent of schools Wayne Dorr said.

“It's huge,” Dorr said in a June 19 telephone interview.

But the School Committee and residents will need to know, to make informed decisions on budgets and on school consolidation, he said.

For example, moving from a three-school system to two schools wouldn't necessarily mean one less principal is needed, he said. “That's just my opinion,” he added.

In recent years, changes in state law have doubled or even tripled the time it takes a principal to evaluate teachers, Dorr said.

He plans to educate the panel and the public about the various requirements at the committee's June 26 meeting. The agenda item reads: “Principal's role and responsibility in the current educational context.”

Dorr is hoping that the discussion with the committee will help members in their work; and that it will have the added benefit of getting townspeople thinking about those issues, too.

“That is exactly my intent,” he said.

Retiring Wiscasset Middle School Principal Linda Bleile said she agrees with Dorr that the state law has added to principals' workloads.

To comply with the law this past school year, she did formal evaluations on one-third of the teaching staff and informal ones on the other two-thirds. Steps can include classroom observations, conferences with the teacher, and other steps.

Asked if Wiscasset could go from having three principals to two if one of the buildings is closed, Bleile said: “It would be very challenging to continue an effective observation system with teachers because of the time that it demands.

“These are time-consuming processes. If you double the number of teachers for any principal, my concern is, where in the school day does that come from?”

In a June 20 interview at the middle school, she cited one factor working in the town's favor to be able to meet the state requirements: They were already in place while Wiscasset was still with Regional School Unit 12; so some of the same staff who worked on the district's compliance will bring that experience to the new school department, Bleile said.

Bleile plans to join Dorr for the June 26 presentation to the school committee. In addition to her service as principal, Bleile has the added perspective of having been on the committee that helped create the law. The law's aim is to increase teachers' and principals' effectiveness and increase student achievement, Bleile said.

The law does represent a shift in how some principals spend their time, according to Mary Paine of the Maine Department of Education. As the department's educator effectiveness coordinator, she helps school departments in their efforts to meet the law.

“Despite the challenges ahead ... we often hear a genuine enthusiasm among principals for the work of instructional leadership and a desire to learn all they can about what goes on and should be going on in classrooms,” Paine writes in a June 19 email to the Wiscasset Newspaper. “In the coming years, we will likely see principals in classrooms much more often than ever before, which is one intent of the educator effectiveness law.”

The school committee meets at 6 p.m. June 26 in the Wiscasset High School library.