Dresden residents are considering whether to remain with Regional School Unit 2 or pursue other options as enrollment in the town’s lone elementary school, seen here on Cedar Grove Road, drops and the costs to the town continue to rise. Jessica Lowell/Kennebec Journal

DRESDEN — With enrollment shrinking and costs rising, Dresden residents are considering four options for the future of students at the town’s lone elementary school.

The school could remain in Regional School Unit 2, join a different school district, keep the elementary school open and send students to middle and high schools in other towns on a tuition basis or close the elementary school and send all the town’s students to different districts on a tuition basis.

“We understand there are high emotions when it comes to the future of the education and current education system in town,” Leah Bickford, who heads up Dresden’s Education Exploratory Committee, said at the start of the meeting Monday where the options were presented. 

The town has only one school, Dresden Elementary School, which serves around 65 students, and is currently a part of RSU 2. 

As the town’s student enrollment in Regional School Unit 2 has dropped, the budget has steadily increased. When town officials surveyed residents in fall 2022, they found that around 70% of those who answered wanted a committee to explore the educational pathways for Dresden students.

For a year and a half the committee, made up of six community members and Selectperson Lisa Hewitt, have collected and reviewed data and reports and interviewed superintendents of school districts in the area to develop the options.

With each option, Bickford said there are pros and cons.

In the most recent school year, Dresden paid $2.1 million to RSU 2 for 152 students. The year before that, it paid $1.9 million for 146 students. RSU 2 provides professional development for teachers and school board representatives, but the bus transport time between Monmouth and Hallowell, where the high schools are, is long and the bus times are inconvenient, especially for after school activities.

If Dresden opts to keep the elementary school and tuition middle and high school students out, they could become a municipal school unit, similar to Fayette Central School, where the school unit would have a school board to make decisions governing the elementary school.

If the  town closes the elementary school and tuition all students out, Bickford said the state sets a maximum tuition amount for high school at $13,300 per pupil and $11,446 for middle school students. Town taxpayers would be responsible to pay that, but parents could choose where to send students, depending on whether they have special needs or want to pursue a technical school program for example.

Currently,  Dresden pays $14,000 per student to RSU 2.

But, with a tuition route, parents would have to transport their children to school and a spot in the school of choice would not be guaranteed. Legally, the town would have to contract a school district with  middle and high schools to guarantee spots for the tuition-based students.

Lastly, Dresden could join a separate school district, like Bath-area RSU 1, the Richmond School Department, Gardiner-based Maine School Administrative District 11, or the Wiscasset School Department. To do so, they would have to pursue the withdrawal process, which is lengthy and costly.

Around the same time Dresden’s committee formed in 2022, Richmond, which sits across the Kennebec River from Dresden, successfully gained enough votes from the town to withdraw from RSU 2. In the first year as its own school district, the town’s fiscal commitment to the school budget went up 24% compared to Richmond’s contribution to RSU 2. 

Paul Tunkle, a Dresden resident, asked the committee if they considered the educational value or if they were only focused on the price of each option and the committee said they did look at some student performance data, but the committee’s focus was very specific to the pathway, not the educational value.

Bickford said the committee was tasked with considering only the options and not the educational value.

Hewitt said the town could move that way if it wants, and it would be determined by a well-advertised survey.

“Based on this, if there is interest, we will send a survey out, given the options, do you want to move forward or stay,” she said.