If organizers of a proposed charter school realize their vision, high school students from around the Wiscasset region will have the option to attend secondary school at the former primary school.

Sheepscot Bay Charter School, with help from Morris Farm (next door to the primary school), is vying for one of three remaining slots to become state-designated charter schools. By state law, the state can create a charter school or a local school district can, said Alna’s Les Fossel, a member of the new school’s inception committee and co-president at Morris Farm.

The committee would prefer the locally-based designation over a state one, for the relationship it could help foster, Fossel, a former Maine legislator, said July 24.

However, the school could accept state approval first and then transition to the local designation if the school committee supported it, he said.

Or, if the school committee is not comfortable with creating the charter school, the charter school would still want to work cooperatively with the school committee, Fossel said.

He expressed confidence that the state will approve Sheepscot Bay Charter School, due to the experience the inception committee’s members bring to the program, including work at Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset and the private Deck House school in Edgecomb.

About half the committee’s members also serve on Morris Farm’s board, said Morris Farm co-president Merry Fossel of Alna, (Les Fossel’s wife).

The town’s decision to close the primary school led to the idea for the charter school, Les Fossel said. The primary school had a very close relationship with Morris Farm, and the nonprofit wanted to still have a neighbor it could do programs with, he said.

“Morris Farm said, what would come there instead and how could we be cooperative. And that’s where it started,” Fossel said.

The charter school would also fit with discussions that Morris Farm has been having for years, to further its educational mission, Merry Fossel said.

“We want to give birth to this (school), but they will be their own separate organization. The Morris Farm is not going to be having a charter school,” Les Fossel said. The school would be its own nonprofit with a separate board from Morris Farm’s board, the couple said.

The inception committee should know in November if the charter school will get one of the state’s slots, said the proposed school’s Head of School Sarah Ricker, former Wiscasset High School assistant principal.

In separate interviews, Les Fossel and Ricker said the charter school’s organizers are not looking to compete with Wiscasset Middle High School for students. Wiscasset schools stand to benefit by the charter school attracting more students to Wiscasset, they said.

“The intent is not to draw strength away from Wiscasset schools, but to build them up,” Fossel said.

When people talk about where they may send their children to school, he tells them to look at Wiscasset.

“What we need to do is keep student populations up in Wiscasset, and have people look at Wiscasset as a viable alternative.”

A family that sends an older sibling to the charter school might enroll its younger ones in the earlier grades at Wiscasset Elementary and Middle High schools; and a student who tries out either Wiscasset’s high school program or the charter school might transfer to the other one later, Fossel said.

“If a student comes to the charter school and it isn’t a good fit for them, we can say, ‘Why don’t you try the Wiscasset high school down the road?’

“Having two choices right next to each other is a powerful thing,” he said.

The primary school building is bigger than what the charter school would need; so the new school would probably seek some kind of a shared arrangement, such as leasing it from the town or whoever the town sells the property to, or possibly a shared ownership with another party, Ricker said.

If the primary school ends up not being an option, the charter school would seek space elsewhere in Wiscasset, possibly at the middle high school building, Les Fossel said.

Selectmen interviewed on July 24 said all the interest in the primary school property is a good sign for the property’s prospects on the market, but not a surprise.

“I think it’s very encouraging,” Selectmen’s Chairman Ben Rines Jr. said.

“I wasn’t surprised. It’s a good piece of property,” Vice Chairman Judy Flanagan said. The location is good and the building’s layout could apply to numerous types of uses, she said.

The property will be listed at $895,0000, real estate agent Sherri Dunbar has said. As of July 27, it is neither under contract nor under lease, Dunbar said.

In addition to the charter high school, Lincoln County Healthcare has expressed interest in a temporary lease for staff training; and local salon owner Desiree Bailey has proposed buying the property for a holistic health and healing center, salon and day spa, with an educational use that could make it all or partly tax-exempt.

In a letter the school department provided at the Wiscasset Newspaper’s request, Ricker, on behalf of the inception committee, tells the Maine Charter School Commission that the school’s mission is to “prepare a diverse group of students for the future by equipping individuals with skills, knowledge and attitudes to become self-motivated, resilient learners .... We aspire to make learning challenging, inspiring and rewarding.”

The school would serve 40 students in grades nine through 12, then expand to also serve middle grade-level students within five years, the  letter states.

Les Fossel said any expansion to middle school grades would be considered later and depend on whether any similar programs have begun serving those grade levels. It would be looked at if the need is there, he said.

The proposed charter school’s focus would be on hands-on, exploratory learning and would involve entrepreneurship and internships in the community, Ricker said.

Exploring the fisheries and farming and forestry industries that set Maine apart may interest some students in those fields or help them become the next generation in their families to work in those areas, said inception committee member and Morris Farm board member Kandyce Powell of Wiscasset.

Morris Farm is serving as the fiscal agent during the application process, Ricker said in the interview and the letter to the commission. The school should find out in November if it has been approved as a charter school, she said. The plan would be to open the school in fall 2016.

Organizers plan to meet with Wiscasset selectmen about the school’s interest in the primary school building, but wanted to meet with the school committee first, she said.

Organizers of the proposed Sheepscot Bay Charter School plan to make a presentation at the Wiscasset School Committee’s July 30 meeting. The meeting starts at 6 p.m. in the Wiscasset Middle High School library.

The proposed school’s inception committee sought the presentation in hopes that the charter school will have a relationship with the school committee, Ricker said. 

The point of Thursday’s discussion is to open a dialogue for how the proposed school and the school committee can work together for Wiscasset, Les Fossel said.

Wiscasset School Committee Chairman Steve Smith said he will hear the school’s presenters out; it would be difficult to add a charter school to the department just as the department is transitioning to a two-school system, he said.

Smith said he doubted that a majority of school committee members would support authorizing a charter school. No school department in Maine has done it, he said.

“Wiscasset is not going to be the first.”