A packed meeting agenda for Thursday evening includes several items related to the future shape of Regional School Unit 12 and cooperation with neighboring districts.

The school board will vote on a withdrawal agreement with Palermo, a contract to provide business office services to Wiscasset and a possible motion to continue busing students to Cony High School next year.

The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at Whitefield Elementary School.

RSU 12’s configuration is in flux. Wiscasset’s separation from the school district will take effect July 1, when an independent school district in the town takes control of schools there. Committees representing the RSU and Windsor have come to a tentative agreement for that town’s withdrawal, while a referendum in Westport Island last week halted their withdrawal process.

The RSU 12 school board will vote Thursday on an agreement, already approved by Palermo’s Withdrawal Committee, that would take effect on July 1, 2015. Palermo initiated its withdrawal process at a special town meeting in December 2012.

The agreement says Palermo will continue to educate children in kindergarten through eighth grade “in the same manner that educational services were provided prior to Palermo joining RSU 12,” at Palermo Consolidated School. The town has struck a 10-year deal with RSU 3 to send students to Mount View High School in Thorndike.

The agreement makes Palermo responsible for 9.3 percent of the local cost of financial commitments agreed to by RSU 12, such as the bonds for Windsor Elementary and Chelsea Elementary construction. That’s equivalent to the percentage Palermo contributed to the RSU budget under the original funding formula.

After the RSU 12 school board approves the agreement, it goes to the education commissioner and then to voters, likely in November.

November also would have been when Westport Island residents voted on withdrawal, had they not voted 72-59 last week to halt the process.

RSU 12 Superintendent Howard Tuttle said he’s pleased the town will remain in the district.

“I think both financially and educationally, it makes the most sense for Westport Island and for all the towns in RSU 12,” Tuttle said.

Gerald Bodmer, who led Westport Island’s withdrawal committee, said they were waiting for an RSU 12 school board committee to forward their withdrawal agreement to the full school board and expected that to happen this month.

But RSU 12 school board member Richard DeVries, who was appointed by the district to the town’s withdrawal committee, successfully petitioned for a referendum question on last week’s ballot to stop the withdrawal.

Bodmer said he’s disappointed the town won’t have a chance to examine all the pros and cons of withdrawing, especially after the committee spent two years hammering out details. Westport Island initiated the withdrawal process in June 2012 on a 152-70 vote.

“There are some people that actually want to leave the RSU, and there are of course those that want to stay,” Bodmer said. “And both sides have to know the full story. We never got to tell them the whole story.”

With Wiscasset’s withdrawal, RSU 12 will lose its only high school. Students from the remaining seven towns in the district will still be entitled to attend Wiscasset High School for 10 years, but few students from the northern part of the RSU have chosen to go there. As a result, RSU officials have been looking for guaranteed seats at schools that would be closer to towns like Chelsea and Windsor.

RSU 12 students attend schools including Hall-Dale High School, Erskine Academy and Lincoln Academy but can be disinvited without an expulsion hearing.

That was also the case for students at Cony, but last fall RSU 12 negotiated a one-year deal with Augusta Public Schools to pay a 5.25 percent tuition premium in exchange for a guarantee that those students could finish the year at Cony. Augusta also provided transportation, though that was not in the agreement.

The agreement with Cony expires June 30. Augusta wanted a 12 percent premium on tuition — which by state law is based on a school’s per-pupil spending, which is relatively low at Cony — to continue it, Tuttle said. RSU 12 school board members deemed that too expensive, especially because the RSU would also have to pick up the cost of busing.

RSU 12’s tuition and busing committee will recommend to the full school board on Thursday that the RSU pay for busing to Cony but warn families that it will last for only one year.

“We do need to have a discussion about busing, and there does need to be some kind of vote on busing for Cony,” Tuttle said. “We seem to have this problem every year.”

The school board also needs to have a larger conversation about how RSU 12 students will get to the schools they attend — 32 of them outside the district this year, Tuttle said.

It has been the RSU’s policy not to provide transportation outside the district, except when mandated for special education students, but the district will pay for busing to Wiscasset next year.

“We always bused to Wiscasset because that was one of our schools. But now that they’re leaving, we have students in our district who have depended on their transportation,” Tuttle said. “If we take it away, there’s no way they’re going to get there.”

Also on the agenda is an agreement for the Wiscasset school district to buy payroll and accounts payable services from RSU 12 for $100,000. It provides income for the RSU and could smooth the transition for Wiscasset, which has to make payroll in the second week of July.

“I think this is beneficial for them and us,” Tuttle said.

The school board will also consider adding a new Head Start preschool program in Somerville and moving another from Windsor to Chelsea.

The former Somerville elementary school, which is home to the RSU’s central office, also housed an alternative education program provided through Wiscasset High School. RSU 12 students will continue in that program in Wiscasset, freeing up space in Somerville.

Tuttle said there’s a strong need for quality preschool in the Somerville area. RSU 12 and the Midcoast Maine Community Action Head Start Program will share costs and responsibilities, and it would accept income-eligible children from Somerville, Palermo, Whitefield and possibly Windsor.

RSU 12 has provided space for a Head Start program at Windsor Elementary, but a lack of space there is forcing the RSU to consider moving it to Chelsea Elementary. The RSU shares costs for that program with Southern Kennebec Child Development Corporation, which will choose income-eligible children from Chelsea and Windsor.

Chelsea would also be the site of all RSU 12 school board meetings in 2014-15, according to a draft schedule on which the board will vote Thursday.

In the past, meetings have rotated among schools, but because of Wiscasset’s withdrawal, there is less of a need to meet that far south. The two southern towns remaining in the district, Alna and Westport Island, do not have schools where the board could meet.

Lincoln County TV will broadcast the meetings.

Susan McMillan — 621-5645

smcmillan@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @s_e_mcmillan