If Wiscasset closed its high school grades, "everybody" would end up regretting it, School Committee Chair and Wiscasset future of the schools committee member Jason Putnam said. "I think it would be a terrible mistake," he told fellow members of the ad hoc committee Monday night. 

Putnam is on its yet to meet, "status quo/expansion" subcommittee. He said it's more about the latter, as in, how "to get more kids into our school."

Keeping the high school grades in town maintains local control, keeps those jobs in town and gives families continuity, Putnam said. Closing the high school grades would impact Wiscasset Community Center and have other, hard to assess ripple effects, he said.

"Once an important institution is gone, it is very hard to replace ... CuIturally, this is a terrible idea. I know we're here to find out all the options. But if we shut this school down, we're going to regret it. There's no doubt about it. The time will come, that everybody will regret it," he said.

The status quo isn't working or there wouldn't be the ad hoc committee, Superintendent of Schools Kim Andersson concurred about a need to attract and best serve students. "We know that we have work to do. And so, we're doing it."

She said the recent comprehensive look the department did in connection with federally funded programs has helped get all employees thinking daily about promoting "growth and change for all learners," including themselves. 

Andersson listed things the department is doing to try to up enrollment, including, like last year, having students make recruitment visits to area schools. She said a Whitefield girl told her last year's visit was why she chose Wiscasset for high school. Among other efforts, the department now has full-time Pre-K five days a week and may add a second class next year; and, under a grant, Wiscasset is piloting a program of social outreach to link families to story time and other local activities for small children, she said. This can help connect those children to the school system, and can help prepare them for Pre-K, Andersson said.

The committee continued drafting questions to send other school departments as it gathers information for a report on options for Wiscasset schools' future. Selectmen's Chair Sarah Whitfield, board liaison to the committee, said asking about steps another school department would need to take, to take in as many as 100 Wiscasset high schoolers, might not be the way to go. She told committee members, “The point of these questions is just to gauge interest. We know there’s a process that they would have to go (through),” but if they lack the room for that number of students, that’s information the committee needs, she explained. 

Andersson advised against using “school of record” to describe what some other school would potentially serve as, if Wiscasset did tuition out its high school grades. Once you use that term when reaching out to school departments, she said, “People are gonna be like, ‘Wooo.’ There’s a lot of political consideration there.”

Committee Chair Duane Goud, reporting on a subcommittee's work studying the tuitioning out option, said the reach-out to other school departments should be positive and not discourage other options or ideas.

Committee members planned to review a report a similar committee in Dresden has prepared as that town looks at its options for education. That might be a model for organizing the Wiscasset committee's report, Monday night's participants said.