Six months since the town of Wiscasset voted in favor of starting the process of withdrawing from Regional School Unit 12, committee members from the town and school district have begun to shape a plan. Withdrawal Committee members from the town and RSU 12 will meet January 21 to discuss the initial plan drafted by the town's committee.

This meeting comes after a letter from the attorney representing the town's interests complained that school district administration and its ad-hoc negotiating committee have been delaying the process. 

“I am writing to express our disappointment and dismay about the course of conduct on the RSU side,” writes attorney Geoffrey Hole in a December 19 letter addressed to RSU attorney William Stockmeyer. “Your side has shown no substantive attention to the withdrawal.” 

The letter includes Hole's intention to seek an injunction against a pattern of delay as the town faces the difficulty of statutory time frames.

Wiscasset Town Manager Laurie Smith said they have been waiting since the June 2012 vote for a plan to come together and missed an opportunity to vote on a plan in November. 

Since June, committee members have communicated back and forth to share information. Hole indicates in his letter the town committee has not received needed information from the school district and has met some measure of resistance over the past several months.

The RSU 12 Withdrawal Committee had 90 days from the June 2012 town vote to produce an agreement with the town and submit it to the Commissioner of the Department of Education, according to state statute. 

Since that time, the commissioner has granted the committee extensions to continue to work on an agreement.

Smith said the town is considering legal action to move the process along. She said they would like to hold a June vote on a withdrawal plan. In order to do so, the state would need time (at most 60 days) to review and accept or deny the plan and the town would need to have a 45-day window of time to prepare the public for a vote. She said they would need to have everything sewn up by the last week in April.

Alan Hawkins, the school district's interim Superintendent, and board members supported the work of the withdrawal committee during their most recent meeting in Palermo January 10. 

Despite concerns expressed in Hole's letter, he said the school district's administration has responded to the town's withdrawal committee in a timely manner. 

According to Hilary Holm, the school district's Board of Directors chairman, there were some interruptions in communication between the town committee and the school district. In a separate telephone interview, she mentioned an incident in July, but added, “I think any court would see that the business manager responded in a reasonable time.” 

Also, the school district's central office moved over the summer. Computers needed to be unplugged and it took a certain amount of time to plug back into the new location in Somerville. “We didn't purposely do it,” she said, referring to any delays in getting information to the Wiscasset withdrawal committee. “It's just life, getting in the way.”

She and Hawkins also referenced a delayed response from the town committee. Holm said the school district received an email dated December 14 requesting information, only they did not get the email until January 7. 

Holm said the town's intention to have a June vote on a plan is unreasonable and the process is going to take longer than people have expected. “It's going to take what it takes,” she said. “Obviously not 90 days.” She added that the 90-day time frame in the law is more of an indicator, motivating people to work toward a goal, rather than a date set in stone.

“We didn't get their draft plan until November,” she said. “Now we are able to respond; we can do our back and forth.”