The Wiscasset Withdrawal Committee is planning another informational meeting on Jan. 10 to present the estimated cost of running an independent school district.
The figures were scheduled to be presented at a similar informational meeting on Dec. 6, 2012 but the committee’s educational consultants Raymond Poulin and Norm Higgins said they needed more time to review the numbers and prepare to defend them before they were released to the public.
Since Wiscasset residents voted June 12 to pursue withdrawing from Sheepscot Valley RSU 12, the committee has been working toward developing and negotiating a withdrawal plan that must include provisions for administration.
The committee made the decision to pursue a stand-alone central office instead of joining with another district on Sept. 27, 2012 and voted to provide their own transportation, maintenance, special education, technology, and food services at their meeting on Oct. 25, 2012.
Poulin and the committee are scheduled to meet at 5 p.m on Jan. 10 to go over any questions the committee may have about the figures, followed by the informational meeting at 6 p.m. The meetings will be held at the Wiscasset Fire Station.
No questions or comments will be taken from the public during the 5 p.m. meeting, said Chairman Mary Myers.
In other business, the committee voted to file a request for a second extension of their deadline to file a withdrawal plan with the Dept. of Education.
The current deadline is Jan. 17, committee member Jeff Slack wrote in an email on Jan. 4.
Committee member Tim Merry asked for the request to include language stating the request was “due to the lack of effort on the part of the RSU.”
Myers said she would include copies of email exchanges between the Wiscasset and RSU committee members.
Slack said he would like to include a copy of a Dec. 19, 2012 letter from the committee’s lawyer, Geoffrey Hole, to the RSU’s lawyer, William Stockmeyer.
The letter expresses “disappointment and dismay” about the RSU’s conduct in the matter of withdrawal, including Wiscasset facing “months of not receiving information.”
Hole wrote he had considered filing an injunction against the RSU for “this pattern of delay” and that he is confident Wiscasset would prevail, but the court would have to “crowd” the Dept. of Education as much as the RSU, which would not be fair.
“In summary, we want it to be very clear to the RSU that Wiscasset will no longer tolerate this pattern of delay,” Hole wrote.
Several attempts to reach members of the RSU ad hoc Withdrawal Committee were unsuccessful by press time.
