A Westport Island official predicted April 10 that most of the town's parents will continue to send their children to Wiscasset schools.

But he couldn't be sure of that, he said, because Westport Island has school choice; each family, not the whole town, decides where a student goes to school.

“There are no guarantees,” Gerald Bodmer told the Wiscasset School Committee.

Bodmer is a Westport Island selectman and chairman of that town's withdrawal committee, which has been crafting a possible pullout from Regional School Unit 12.

As part of its work, the committee has to show the state that the town has found a school to take any high school students turned away by their schools of choice. Bodmer told the Wiscasset panel that he hoped Wiscasset High School would be that school.

Otherwise, the committee will have to look to Lincoln Academy or elsewhere, Bodmer said.

He agreed that the details could be worked out later; for now, the withdrawal committee just needs an understanding, in writing, to include with the deal when it goes to Education Commissioner Jim Rier, Bodmer said.

School committee members took no vote but said they could give the Westport Island panel the document it is seeking, if it passes muster with a lawyer and is consistent with a similar arrangement in Wiscasset's withdrawal deal with the district.

But members told Bodmer and fellow withdrawal committee member Mort Mendes, those students in need of a school are not the only ones Wiscasset wants. The town would welcome all Westport Island students, they said.

Bodmer said most probably will go to school in Wiscasset, because that's where they've been going and that's where their friends go. But Wiscasset should do what it can to keep them, he said.

“If you let them slip out of your fingers, shame on you.”

Other schools shop for students and Wiscasset should also, Bodmer said.

Wiscasset High School reaches out to area students and their parents to consider the school as a viable option, Principal Deb Taylor wrote in an email later.

Responding to questions from the Wiscasset Newspaper, Taylor wrote that the school takes part in area parent nights, and meets with students and parents, most recently April 7 at Wiscasset Middle School.

The school also keeps the public up-to-date on the school and its programs, on its website and Facebook page and in the local media, Taylor continued; and it invites area middle school students to various events, such as Diversity Day and, earlier this year, the Spirit Assembly with Portland television station WGME.

Interim Superintendent Wayne Dorr and school committee members told Bodmer and Mendes that a lawyer will be reviewing the proposed wording of the document for the education commissioner.

“We're not going to force you into anything,” Bodmer said. “Look at this, cross out what you don't like and call (us) back.”

The same school policies and practices other students are subject to would apply to any Westport Island student who comes to Wiscasset, after being turned away by other schools, Dorr said.

Bodmer said he could only think of, at most, one student in town who had ever fallen into that category. It just doesn’t happen, but the commissioner needs to see that the town has a plan, he said.