Mon, 03/11/2024 - 8:45am

SUSAN JOHNS

Superintendent of Schools Kim Andersson. File photo

Wiscasset and nearby school departments will talk about a possible adult education partnership, Superintendent of Schools Kim Andersson told selectmen and the budget committee Wednesday night, March 6.

Describing recent local history, Andersson said Wiscasset partnered with Morse High School in Bath, and Morse then partnered with Merrymeeting out of Topsham. “And they do very little out of our site. But there’s a demand for our site from our neighbors, both to the north and on the (Boothbay) peninsula. So we will be talking next year to create a regional adult ed program which will be (Regional School Unit) 12, Boothbay and Wiscasset” and RSU 40, she said. The director from current area programs will work out of Wiscasset “because it’s centrally located,” Andersson added.

She brought up the possible partnership when reviewing the proposed 2024-25 school budget the school committee is set to consider March 12; still to be set is the town-meeting style school budget meeting where residents vote on each cost center; then comes the up or down vote at the polls June 11.

The school committee is considering a $10,573,002 budget, up $251,473 from this year’s. Due to a 3.61% cut in state aid, the increase to local taxpayers would be 6.12%, Andersson said.

The hike could wind up less than the 6.12% by the time the budget proposal reaches voters: Andersson explained via phone and email, voters last year also designated $600,000 from the undesignated fund balance to offset taxes; and the department is on track to finish 2023-24 with some of that $600,000 untapped. If so, the undesignated fund balance could turn out bigger than the $1,288,918 and the school committee could then consider taking more than the planned $600,000 from it, she said.

“We’re just watching every single penny, and being really careful,” she told selectmen and the budget committee about why costs are tracking lower. Andersson expects to have an updated projection on the undesignated fund balance in May.

Andersson cited budget factors including an end to recent years’ millions of dollars in COVID money; a drop in state aid; and teacher raises of about 7% in year two of a three-year pact.

As proposed, the Wiscasset Middle High School athletic director-assistant principal job would change to an assistant principal serving both WMHS and Wiscasset Elementary School, and a $15,000 a year stipend would fund an athletic director; a $60,000 a year school resource officer that had been grant-funded would change to a $30,000, half-time SRO; a new, media center/technology integrator would work full-time out of the WMHS library; and an educational technician job would be replaced with a technology coordinator Andersson said is “desperately” needed. “We don’t have a centralized information technology department. We do have a couple of ed techs who do some tech stuff and we have some outside people, so (having the coordinator is) going to be pretty great, I hope.”

In other budget talks March 6, Town Manager Dennis Simmons said the tentative tap from capital reserve now stands at $1,002,702, which he said is about $476,000 over policy for how much to tap annually.

“You could hit (what the policy calls for) if you didn’t do half a million in paving, which is going cost you twice that two years from now,” Tom Joyce of the budget committee said. He and Simmons noted the town has in recent years been getting caught up on delayed capital items.