Just when Wiscasset's interim superintendent of schools Wayne Dorr found more than $300,000 in savings to offer the school committee, new information drove the budget draft part of the way back up to the $10 million he started with.

The latest bottom line is $9.8 million, Dorr said March 19. He cited several unknowns, some that could raise that figure and others that could bring it down. Among them is state aid, which at first looked like it would come in at about $1.4 million, then $1.29 million; on March 18, a state number-cruncher told Dorr it would probably move a bit lower.

The unknowns have made the budget work a roller coaster ride, Dorr said.

He doesn't yet know the impact of new nutrition regulations for lunch, or how much federal aid the town will get for special education, he said.

Dorr updated the committee on the budget at a workshop in the Wiscasset High School library. He asked members to hold off on responding to the proposed $365,983 in cuts until they had had a couple of days look at them. When they did discuss them at a subsequent workshop on March 22, committee members agreed with all the reductions and added one more, Dorr said: They asked him to eliminate their seats’ stipends from the budget, for a savings of $5,000, he said.

The cuts in the draft budget include $30,000 in substitute teaching; assorted cuts in travel, supplies and software; and $153,145 from letting two retiring teachers' jobs go unfilled, one each at the middle and primary schools.

Additional savings may come from other retirements, Dorr said. Those involve jobs that might be filled by newer teachers who would make less money, he said.

About 35 percent of teachers in Wiscasset are at the top three steps on the pay scale, Dorr said.

On March 22, the committee heard a proposed adult education budget from Regional School Unit 12’s adult education director Anne Fensie. Dorr informed the committee it will need to decide what, if any, adult education Wiscasset will offer. “You’ve got that fundamental question you’ve got to answer,” he said at the start of Saturday’s workshop. He said later that committee members asked Fensie to get back to them with a smaller budget.

A free lunch?

School Committee Vice Chairman Steve Smith on March 19 raised the idea of putting enough money into food services to give all students free lunches.

Smith figured it would take $60,000 a year.

Regional School Unit 12’s food services director Lorie Johnson said later that she was not sure what it would cost. She will check with the state to see how the change would work, in case the committee wants to pursue it, she said.