Partners in Education and the Wiscasset School Committee are continuing to talk about the local nonprofit's possible role in helping to create a vision for the town's schools.

Committee Vice Chairman Steve Smith and committee member Sharon Nichols on May 22 said it would be premature to consider putting PIE members onto a vision subcommittee, before the schools' new principals and other members of the school department’s administrative team have met. The administrators will be an “A” team, Smith said.

“They're going to decide how they want to go forward .... I'd like to hear the direction they're going on,” he told PIE members. Then the  school committee could look at creating a subcommittee for a vision.

Committee member Colleen Bennett encouraged fellow committee members to make PIE part of the process of forming the vision. “This is community members. There's a lot of smart people that go to this, and I think it's important to get everyone involved.”

Smith offered to attend an upcoming PIE meeting.

PIE has done a survey to gather ideas and opinions on public education; and it has been talking about how to come up with a vision for Wiscasset's schools.

Kim Andersson, who co-chairs PIE, described the school committee's discussion as positive.

“It sounds like they want this to happen, so that's good,” Andersson said in a telephone interview.

If PIE is asked to do any work before the school committee creates a subcommittee, it will, she said. “If not, we can all just pause.

“It's a lot to lay on the school committee's plate, and we're really just wanting to try to be helpful.”