Wiscasset's school budget is getting smaller as it moves closer to a town vote.

The once $10 million budget draft is down to $7 million-plus, Interim Superintendent Wayne Dorr said. That factors in state aid and other income, and the latest string of cost cuts Dorr brought to the school committee on March 26.

Those include having a retiring teacher's and educational technician's jobs go unfilled; and possibly cutting a bus driver's job.

“We have seven. We need six,” Dorr said. He plans to talk further about it with Regional School Unit 12’s head of maintenance and transportation, John Merry, he said.

Among other proposed savings, Wiscasset and RSU 12 would share Merry's time. Merry would work three days a week for Wiscasset and two for the school district, saving the town $37,500, Dorr said.

Dorr's other idea involving the district would be for it to handle the new school system's payroll and other financial operations. That would save $95,000 over the system having its own business office, he said.

Committee members' views on the idea varied. Vice Chairman Steve Smith said the arrangement wouldn't take away any of Wiscasset's control over its school system. But Sharon Nichols doubted that residents would want to have that kind of a tie to the district it has chosen to leave. “I don't see it,” she said.

“There are a lot of bitter feelings,” Nichols said about the withdrawal deal's costs to Wiscasset.

She asked Dorr to keep looking at other school departments as alternatives to RSU 12 for the payroll and other tasks.

He said he would; he's still talking with Superintendent Eileen King of Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS) 98 that serves Boothbay peninsula towns and Georgetown, he said; but he's concerned about whether an arrangement with the AOS would be in place in time for Wiscasset's first day on its own, July 1.

“Very concerned,” he added. “... As soon as you tell 154 people they're not going to be paid, these seats will be filled, and they should be,” he said, motioning to the audience.

One payroll option he had eyed is off the table: School Administrative District (SAD) 51 in Cumberland is no longer interested, because it has a number of other projects to focus on, Dorr told committee members.

Also March 26, the committee expressed support for restoring foreign language classes at  Wiscasset Middle School, part-time, by having a teacher travel there from Wiscasset High School. Members also learned from Dorr, he has gotten word that grant funding will partly cover the athletic director-assistant principal’s job at the high school.

Plans call for the committee to present a budget offer to residents at a public hearing April 14; at another meeting May 14, voters will be able to raise or lower each part of the budget before it goes on to a single-question, referendum vote June 10, Dorr said.