FREEPORT – Freshly organized groups of Freeport residents have barely a month to campaign for or against the town’s possible withdrawal from Regional School Unit 5.

Freeport voters will decide on Nov. 4 if they want to leave RSU 5, which has been in existence since 2009, and also includes Durham and Pownal. The Freeport Withdrawal Committee negotiated terms of withdrawal with RSU 5 a little more than a month ago.

A new anti-withdrawal group met privately for the first time on Monday night, according to organizer Betsy Peters. She said she would have more to say soon regarding the group’s position and its organization.

A new group calling itself “Yes for Freeport,” meanwhile, supports withdrawal. Laura Girr, a former teacher who has children in the school system, said that Yes for Freeport met for the first time on Sunday night.

The Withdrawal Committee is working with the Town Council on a possible budget for a school unit comprising only Freeport. The council was scheduled to discuss the $14,002,178 budget model – which figures $288,876 in cost savings compared to the 2013-2014 RSU 5 budget – on Tuesday night, after the Tri-Town Weekly’s deadline. Freeport’s RSU 5 tax burden for 2013-2014 is $14,291,054.

The total RSU budget for this school year is $25,855,313.

Peters said that she and others are not necessarily buying those proposed numbers.

“Right now it’s just a group of people who are not convinced by the budgets or the data coming out of the Withdrawal Committee,” she said.

Moving Freeport Forward, which has disbanded, gathered the signatures that led to a vote last December, calling for the town to study withdrawal from RSU 5.

“There’s nothing in there that should give the taxpayers any heartburn,” Charly Haversat Matheson said of the budget model. “It should be viewed very positively.”

Matheson is an RSU 5 board candidate and was a leader in the Moving Freeport Forward effort.

At the outset, at least, the Town Council’s budget analysis for a stand-alone Freeport school unit assumes the same Freeport High School student enrollment as this year, which, at more than 500, is the capacity. The council voted 5-2 two weeks ago to at least start with that model, which would generate the maximum amount of state aid to education. Rod Regier, former Town Council chairman, said at the Sept. 16 council meeting that by using that model, the town is presenting a “rosy scenario” for withdrawal. The Town Council engaged in heated debate as to whether at least one other scenario using fewer students at the high school should be studied.

Using the 2013-2014 RSU 5 budget. Abbe Yacoben, Freeport’s finance director, worked with the Withdrawal Committee to extract Durham and Pownal expenses and revenues from that budget.

According to material in the budget analysis, the stated objective is a “static financial analysis of what school funding could have looked like had Freeport been separate last year.” It is not an estimate of future enrollments and associated cost adjustments, or an attempt to identify cost savings with shared services with the town of Freeport.

The model assumes that the town will take full control of central office administrative positions, and that it is reimbursed half of special education costs “directly attributable” to Pownal and Durham students.

There are no “Freeport synergies” with town government, according to the budget analysis. Peter Murray, chairman of the Withdrawal Committee and a school board member, said that “no synergies” means the budget has not allowed for any shared services or efficiencies between the school department and the town.

A CLOSER LOOK

A Freeport stand-alone school department budget analysis is available at www.freeportmaine.com, by clicking on “special town council workshop.”