WISCASSET

Wiscasset and Westport Island are one step closer to wriggling their students out of Regional School Unit 12 after two separate votes Tuesday.

In both towns, a referendum asking voters whether to petition to leave RSU 12 passed by approximately 100 votes.

Those referendum questions also approved budgets to fund costs associated with the continuation of a potential withdrawal process, which would still require months of study and a final approval by a two-thirds vote in each town.

On Tuesday, Westport Island voters approved $20,000 to cover those expected costs, and Wiscasset voters approved spending $55,000 for studying the matter.

Throughout the process, some observers, including House District 63 Rep. Les Fossel, R-Alna, have raised issue with the process for a town to exit a regional school unit, specifically the fact that state law only allows withdrawal as a result of a final two-thirds majority rather than a simple majority.

“When you get in by a majority vote and get out by a two-thirds vote, I think that’s a problem,” Fossel said at a forum on Wiscasset’s potential withdrawal last October.

However, based on Tuesday’s vote on filing a petition — which only required over 50 percent of the vote — Westport Island may have that support.

On the petition question, 68.4 percent of Westport Island voters, 152-72, supported the petition for withdrawal, just over the 66 percent threshold.

In Wiscasset, where the town’s budget committee recommended 7-1 against petitioning for withdrawal, support registered at 57.5 percent, 397-293, which is enough to move the process along.

Both towns are among about a dozen Maine communities that held referendums Tuesday on withdrawing from regional school districts, according to Maine Department of Education spokesman David Connerty- Marin, but official accounting of the number of towns that complete the withdrawal process will not be known for some time.

Within 30 days, towns approving withdrawal referendums must notify the RSU and the Maine commissioner of education.

That notification must include a copy of the approved petition and an explanation by municipal officers that summarizes the rationale for the withdrawal request.

After notification, the towns will be directed to form a withdrawal committee that includes one municipal officer, one member of the general public, one member of the group filing the petition, and one representative from the RSU board.

That committee will be charged with studying the impacts of leaving the RSU, which consolidated all of the previously separate school departments’ properties.

The chair of the RSU board will be required to call a meeting of that committee within 30 days from the notice of Tuesday’s vote.

Within 90 days, the withdrawal committee is required to submit to the commissioner of education a proposed agreement for withdrawal negotiated between the municipality and the RSU.

After conditional approval by the state, the town can schedule a public hearing on and another referendum vote on the details of the withdrawal agreement, which must receive a two-thirds majority to complete withdrawal from the RSU.

Connerty-Marin told The Times Record in an email Wednesday that he is aware of another group of approximately a dozen municipalities where signatures are being collected or discussions have started to place on an upcoming ballot a referendum similar to that voted on Tuesday in Wiscasset and Westport Island.

dfishell@timesrecord.com