Wiscasset School Department’s maintenance and transportation director John Merry would go full-time, in an early budget offer he and Superintendent of Schools Heather Wilmot shared with the School Committee Thursday night, March 3.

Merry’s move from three days to five days a week would provide greater supervision, Wilmot said.

Merry currently works two days a week for Regional School Unit 12, as its director of operations. “We have not come up with a plan to cover Mr. Merry's responsibilities yet,” RSU 12 Superintendent of Schools Howie Tuttle writes in an email response Monday to a question from the Wiscasset Newspaper.

A possible new deal with RSU 12, for the district to pay Wiscasset to help oversee bus service, could help offset Wiscasset’s costs for the two new days, Wiscasset school officials said.

Wilmot first announced the possible RSU 12 contract Feb. 25. Updating the committee at the March 3 budget workshop in the Wiscasset Middle High School library, she said she and Tuttle are moving forward with drafting it. Then it would go to the committee for review, Wilmot said last month.

The contract could pay Wiscasset $13,000 to $16,000, Wilmot has said.

Merry’s added time will also have him taking over billing and other tasks an administrative assistant in his department previously did, officials said. That job has been vacant since a resignation last year and, as proposed, would remain unfilled.

Making Merry full-time is cost-effective, Wilmot said.

Department heads finished unveiling their proposed budgets, which Wilmot will now match with the committee’s feedback from both workshops to come up with the budget season’s first, full budget offer.

Pay for union and non-union jobs is projected to hike a total of $292,067; insurance, by $112,448, Wilmot has said. There has been no change since February in a possible state aid hike of $214,199 for Wiscasset, she said at the workshop.

Special Education Director Jess Yates proposed having a behavior analyst go from the current one day a week to two days, due to students’ increased needs; keeping a contracted speech-language pathologist at three days, after a projected part-time job was not filled; and more funding for students’ placement in programs outside Wiscasset.

Two students now attend programs out-of-town and a third, incoming student’s educational plan indicates a need for outside placement, as well, according to information Yates presented.

Yates anticipates that 125 students will get special education or related services, down from the current 130. They make up 24 percent of the student population, compared to the state average of 16 percent, she said.

“We really are trying to target our instruction to help students make progress,” Yates told the committee. The department receives a high rate of students who move around a lot, and ones it must serve because other schools will no longer take them, she said.

An agreement to take RSU 12’s disinvited students has eight years left on it, officials said.

Spending on food services is proposed to drop 25 percent, from this year’s $80,000 to $60,000 next year, officials said. Federal subsidy is up, director Lorie Johnson said.

Budget talks continue March 24, when Wilmot expects the playground committee to air early plans for new fencing, equipment and surfacing on Wiscasset Elementary School’s playground.

School Committee member Glen Craig questioned the inclusion of $20,125 in playground funding in the early budget numbers. “I mean no disrespect, but I don’t know why that’s in this budget already ... It was a very hot topic last year, but it seems to just be filtered in right now to say, hey we’re just going to go ahead and do this.

“I don’t disagree with having to do it, don’t get me wrong,” Craig continued. “But the presentation of having a $20,000 increase, not knowing what that’s even pertaining to yet ... is very blindsiding to me.”

The committee made the pre-kindergarten’s playground needs a priority months ago, Chairman Steve Smith responded. The committee will still get to vote on the playground proposal, Smith said.

Then Craig called for clarity in the budget process. “(It’s) very important. We’re talking money to a town, to get it approved,” he said.

Other members commented on the administrators’ proposals as a whole. “I think overall the budget is pretty reasonable,” Smith said. Contract costs are rising, and the department is following through on last year’s plan to take over funding the school resource officer in 2016, he noted.

“I think (the budget) looks really good, and reasonable,” member Chelsea Haggett said. Some increases were expected, a year into consolidation, but going from three schools to two is still saving money, she said.