With voter rejection of both school referendums, Scarborough’s education officials are taking the time to regroup before moving on to new plans.

“Quite frankly, we need to take a deep breath, take a step back and let the dust settle,” Superintendent David Doyle said Monday.

The two rejected referendums asked voters to approve $38.3 million to demolish and rebuild Wentworth Intermediate and $16.5 million to add onto and renovate the middle school.

On Election Day Nov. 7, voters turned down Wentworth Intermediate 5,176 to 3,316 and the middle school 4,974 to 3,578.

The addition and renovation to the middle school was intended to address capacity problems, said school officials, while the complete replacement of Wentworth was recommended because the old, failing building does not meet many of the current building and safety codes.

“There’s a whole list of why things didn’t work,” said Doyle. The fact that Scarborough voted in favor of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and previously rejected referendums for a senior center and the library, said Doyle, indicates that the prices for the schools had much to do with their defeat.

Scarborough Town Clerk Tody Justice speculated that the two school referendums combined with the Taxpayer Bill of Rights helped push Scarborough’s voter turn out to 61 percent.

“The trend in Scarborough has always been an increased turn out every election,” said Justice. Out of about 14,500 registered voters, said Justice, 8,822 cast either an absentee or regular ballot.

“People are just taking a hard look at what we’re spending money on,” said Doyle. “We’ll try to be flexible,” he added. “The reality is, we have a whole host of other things to keep an eye on with education. We’re not in the business of building buildings.”

With three new school board members, possible changes in state graduation requirements and budget time coming up, said Doyle, the school department has more to focus on before getting back to planning new facilities. For now, the school department will look into capital improvements for Wentworth Intermediate, such as the roof, that were postponed until the election.

Annalee Rosenblatt, who was unopposed for a three-year seat on the board, said she doesn’t think the committee will get to the topic of the schools at its first meeting, but doesn’t want to wait too long, either. She said she hopes to take some time going over all the plans for the schools that were proposed in the design process before looking into planning new schools. Though she isn’t opposed to scrapping everything and starting fresh, working with previous plans would save on design fees.

“We need to minimize the expenses with going forward,” said Rosenblatt.

Rosenblatt also pointed to the favorable TABOR vote in Scarborough and the fact that David Dedian, the town council candidate endorsed by the school board, also lost to Richard Sullivan Jr., who focused mainly on plans to reduce taxes and limit spending. All of this, said Rosenblatt, points to the need to review how the board arrived at the two school plans.

As voters were leaving the polls at the high school on the night of the election, many residents indicated they were not in favor of spending money on new schools, citing recent town projects like the $27 million high school and high taxes.

“I think we’ve done a lot lately in town,” said Jim Bowes. “We need to take a break.”

Lynda Griffith, who has children in the middle school, Wentworth and the high school, voted in favor of the Wentworth project, but voted no on the middle school. While she feels that Wentworth is old and needs to be rebuilt, she thinks moving the sixth grade could solve space problems and spare the town the cost of adding onto the middle school.

For Dan Sullivan, who said he also voted for TABOR, the schools were just too costly.

“We don’t need to be spending all this money,” said Sullivan