WISCASSET

The possible closure of the Wiscasset Primary School was the subject of lively debate at a public hearing Thursday night that took place at Wiscasset Middle School — the facility the town’s youngest students could move to.

Prior to the hearing, the Wiscasset School Committee voted unanimously to move the seventh and eighth grade classes from the middle school building to Wiscasset High School.

The move will take place regardless of the outcome of the Dec. 9 special election, when residents will vote to determine if the primary school will close its doors at the end of the current school year.

Currently, the primary school houses the Head Start program, and kindergarten through fourth grade. At a special school committee meeting on Sept. 15, the committee voted 3-2 to close the primary school.

A citizen petition that circulated called for a referen- dum vote authorizing the school committee to close the school, which, if passed, would make the closure a legally binding action.

Several residents questioned the language of the closure referendum as well as the board’s preference for closing the primary school. The possibility of the facilities change affecting elementary aged students was also a concern repeatedly voiced by residents at the hearing.

“Closing a school is very difficult, it’s very emotional, all of us on the school board would love to not have to close a school,” said school committee chairman Steve Smith.

Wiscasset’s schools are currently enrolled at roughly 50 percent capacity, according to a report from interim Superintendent Lyford Beverage.

Closing the primary school is estimated to save Wiscasset $785,524 per year, the report stated, while closing the middle school would save the town an estimated $655,524 per year — $129,850 less per year than the primary school.

The annual cost for “mothballing” — maintaining a building while not in use, which includes heat, insurance and other costs — the primary school is $53,600. Mothballing the middle school is less expensive, at $48,950.

“I want everyone to understand the state of finances that the town is in,” said Smith. “The town took $1.25 million out of the reserve fund to bring our tax burden down, and another $300,000 out of the fund surplus … so that the tax increase was 4.6 percent.

“Without that money taken out of the town funds, our tax increase would have been 27 percent,” he said. “So something obviously needs to be done. The best way to save the biggest amount of money is to close a school.”

Moving the fifth and sixth grade to the primary school — if the town were to close the middle school — is estimated to cost $5,000, said Smith.

Moving the primary students to the middle school is estimated to cost approximately

$41,500, said Smith, but he noted that the primary school’s utilities cost approximately $30,000 more per year than the middle school’s.

Resident Chris Main asked why the question of which school should be closed was not brought to the town for residents to determine when framing the language of the referendum question.

“There is a legal procedure for closing a school,” said Smith, “and if we had put ‘Which school do you want to close?’ on the referendum, it would not have been legally binding.”

A resident, identified as Judy, asked Wiscasset Middle School interim Principal Bruce Scally and Wiscasset Primary School Principal Mona Schlein how they thought the move would affect students.

“There is always an impact to a student whenever you move from one building to another,” said Scally. “You can take a look at the impact on students when they leave eighth grade and go to ninth grade” in a new school, there are a number of students in the first semester “that aren’t very successful,” he said.

“There is going to be an impact, but kids are resilient,” he said. “The kids are going to be able to take it, they’re going to be able to take a lot more than us parents and us old folks.”

“I really thought the children were insulated from all this,” said Schlein, “but as I started to listen carefully today, I heard kids talking — they’re worried, they’re concerned.

“Little children who have different perspectives on life find such safety in the school that they know,” she said. “Yes, kids are resilient and they can really go anywhere, but for kids that are very, very little, they really need to have that security and safety that they know and are used to.”

A vote to keep the primary school open would create a limited time frame in which to authorize a school closure in time for the 2015- 16 school year, said Smith. The Wiscasset School Committee has scheduled a meeting for Dec. 11, he said, in case the closure process needs to be immediately resumed.

rgargiulo@timesrecord.com

CURRENTLY, Wiscasset Primary School houses the Head Start program, and kindergarten through fourth grade. At a special school committee meeting on Sept. 15, the committee voted 3-2 to close the primary school.