Wiscasset’s schools are seeing students impacted by family members’ opiates abuse, Special Services Director Carrie Kern said Tuesday night. Kern told the school committee, the impact ranges from those students’ family life to neurological problems from being born addicted.

“(It’s) putting them behind the eight ball,” said Kern.

Committee member Jason Putnam asked Kern what could be done. “This is the biggest issue to me, it sounds like, in the future. What can we do to make some sort of difference for them when there are people messing their lives up?”

Pre-kindergarten programs help on intervention, Kern responded. Wiscasset Elementary School has all-day pre-k; patiently working with affected students gets their neurological pathways going, she said.

Kern’s comments came during her leadership update that also highlighted several accomplishments of students and staff. She said students Adriana McInnis, Zach Mank and Tyler Williams took first place in a recent Special Olympics bowling competition; Isaiah DeCosta took second; and Xavier Poissonier, Arianna Newman and Amathyst Bisson took third. Teacher Molly Carlson has met the requirements for national board certification. And Kern cited academic gains the program is seeing in students, including a first grader who had refused to write and now writes two to three pages at a time about assigned subjects; and an autistic fourth grader who had spent 10 percent of the school day in class with other students and 90 percent in a separate space has “flipped” that ratio, she said. The student is now in class 94 percent of the day.

Superintendent of Schools Heather Wilmot noted retirements coming at the end of the school year for Wiscasset Middle High School English teacher Cynthia Turcotte and WMHS math teacher Judith Parent, and at WES, administrative secretary Louann Pontau, fourth grade teacher Lynn Morissette and special education teacher Judith Blair. Wilmot announced three new hires: WES kitchen assistant Toni Picard, WES educational technician Katherine Crawson, and WMHS math-science teacher Neal Goldberg.

The budget under draft for 2018-19 figures in a nine percent hike on health insurance premiums, Wilmot said. She expects the department to know the premiums in April.