Westport selectmen addressed a potentially expensive issue for the town at their meeting on Monday: the actual number of town residents who attend schools in Sheepscot Valley RSU 12.

Westport is assessed a monthly fee for each student it is sending to RSU 12 schools. The fee each month for the estimated 80 Westport students is approximately $84,000. That amounts to around $12,000 per year, per student.

While that is accepted as a necessary cost to educate Westport’s students, if some students are not actually residents of Westport, taxpayers can find themselves funding an unnecessary additional amount.

With a portion of the town’s budget at stake, town officials have decided that an effort to verify that students are, in fact, residents of Westport is in order. Officials will begin to mail letters to parents and guardians in the near future.

The letters explain that it is in the “best interests of the town and the property tax payers to ensure every student for whom we pay tuition is actually a resident of the town.” 

A residency verification application and affidavit will be provided for each child who is attending school.  

As an example, if a family is sending a child from Westport to RSU 12, but the child’s parents or guardian doesn’t vote, register a car or own property in Westport, that student may not actually be a resident of Westport.  

Those receiving the letters will have 30 days in which to provide the completed information. 

If the parent or guardian does not respond to the second request, the RSU will not pay the tuition for those children and the parents or guardian will receive a bill from the school for the child’s tuition.