Whitfield is selectmen’s liaison to the committee, and she chairs the town’s comprehensive plan committee that holds sessions on topics that will be part of the comp plan. One of those workshops will be on education, and arrangements are being made for it to be a joint workshop with the FSC, she said when responding to some of resident Kim Dolce’s comments to selectmen March 5.

 

Dolce reiterated her past statements of concern over the FSC’s preliminary report that stated discontinuing grades nine through 12 at Wiscasset Middle High School would not cut transportation costs or spare the department financial responsibility for those students; and risks costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dolce, a past teacher, called for the FSC to show its work, just as she would have told a student if they submitted a report like FSC’s first one. And Dolce questioned the time it has taken the FSC to complete its work. Voters in June 2021 called for a committee that would look at all options, including consolidation, expansion, and the status quo, she noted.

 

She also again cited Wiscasset Newspaper’s December 2021 coverage of the FSC’s first meeting, where participants mostly talked about wanting more students; how to tell the public what WMHS offers; and find out what else people want it to offer; and no one spoke in favor of tuitioning out the high school grades. At that meeting, Kim Andersson, then a selectman and the board’s liaison to the committee, and who now is Wiscasset’s superintendent of schools, predicted the town would find farming out its high school students would not save money.

 

After Dolce’s prior asks, Whitfield asked Andersson why K-8 could not all be at WMHS. March 5, Whitfield read aloud Andersson’s Jan. 31 email reply: “The high school was designed for four grades. We now have six grades together (seven through 12). There are guidelines about mixing student ages. The short of it is, the building wouldn’t fit grades k - 8.  You could modify it, I guess, maybe add portables to make it work. But as it currently is, it would not house grades PreK-8, not because of the number of students but because of the number of grades,” Andersson explained.

 

Responding to Dolce, Selectman and FSC member Terry Heller recalled having a broken ankle and missing the FSC’s tour of WMHS she said went into its assessment. “All of us that were on the committee really worked pretty hard at” its task, Heller said.

 

Dolce told selectmen this was her fourth time bringing her concerns to the board. She again asked the board to either have the committee finish its work, or to empanel a new one. 

 

Whitfield is working with Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission on a date and a facilitator for the education workshop. “I’m hoping that this workshop will give  a lot of light ...” and aid the FSC’s second report, she said. Is there a second one, Dolce asked. “There’s going to be. That’s the point. We needed to do a public workshop. We can’t just write this on our own,” Whitfield said. The workshop will also aid the comp plan committee’s work, she said.