Written by Amber Skinner | 12 April 2010

After months and months of hand-wringing and heated exchanges, Harpswell's votes have been tallied and West Harpswell Elementary School (WHS) will remain open, at least for the 2010-2011 school year.
But the debate continues and the end of the issue is nowhere in sight.
The citizens' group Friends for Harpswell Education (FHE), which played a critical role in the fight against WHS's consolidation with Harpswell Islands School, will remain intact, "looking to the future and trying to mobilize more resources for both schools, to improve the education for all Harpswell students," FHE spokesman Robert McIntyre said.
A lawsuit filed by 25 residents, many of whom are FHE members, against Maine School Administrative District 75 (MSAD 75) and the Maine Department of Education has been dropped. The lawsuit claimed the calculations used to determine the amount of money Harpswell would owe the District if residents voted to keep WHS open were faulty.
By clearing the potential complication a continuing lawsuit would create, "it's impossible for WHS not to be open next year," McIntyre explained.
"We believe the bill [MSAD 75] presented was illogical, wrong and inflated. We will encourage the Town to negotiate a reduction [to what it owes] based on what is reasonable," he said.
The current cost for keeping WHS open is just over $219,000, in addition to the Town's share of the MSAD 75 budget for the 2010-2011 school year, "funded directly from property taxes," according to Town Administrator Kristi Eiane. This figure will be recalculated each year WHS remains open.
With WHS's projected enrollment for the next school year down to as few as 62, "the School Board will most likely consider the question [of consolidation] again at some point in the future," MSAD 75 Superintendent Michael Wilhelm said. "The Board won't make a decision until September or October, once enrollment figures are firmed up." With one new member from Harpswell on the School Board, elected into office at Town Meeting, the outcome of such a vote is unpredictable.
In the meantime, McIntyre is gathering ammunition for any future fight to keep WHS's doors open. This includes what he claims is proof the District withheld information until after the March 9 school closure vote that indicated "MSAD 75's charge to the Town of Harpswell" [as its share of the MSAD 75 operating budget] would be "less than this year," meaning property "taxes would go down, not up," even with the additional charge to keep WHS open, McIntyre explained.
"We've learned a lot and are prepared for whatever [the District] tries to do," McIntyre said. "I'm very skeptical of any number that comes from MSAD 75."
Wilhelm responded: "We work from the best information, the most accurate and recent figures we have. We knew there was a good chance the assessment to Harpswell would go down, but the whole interplay between state support and local contributions is an uncertainty. We still don't have a concrete idea of what the Town's contribution will be. We won't know that until the end of April.
"We didn't withhold information from anybody. We function very transparently here. The School Board meetings and Finance Committee meetings are telecast and open to the public," he continued.
"There are reasons why we went down this particular road [regarding consolidation], however painful it was, and those reasons still exist," Wilhelm said. "The Board will consider the question [of consolidation] again. We just don't know what the answer will be."