Maine Education Commissioner Susan Gendron was expected to personally update the Westbrook School Committee Wednesday night about school consolidation, and local school officials were anxious to hear what she had to say.

Westbrook School Committee member Tim Crellin said Wednesday that so far, the board has received a lot of information, but it’s been difficult for him to decipher the. He was looking forward to hearing what’s going on from Gendron, something that School Superintendent Stan Sawyer had pushed for.

“The problem for me is that there’s so much information that it’s hard to judge how much it’s going to save,” said Crellin.

Last week, the Legislature’s Education Committee offered its own version of a consolidation plan that is less drastic than the one offered by Gov. John Baldacci. Gendron is expected to begin working with the Appropriations Committee on some combination of plans.

Sawyer said this week that he has always been in favor of consolidation of some kind among school districts in the area, and has worked for consolidation with the city as well. The Westbrook School Department and city of Westbrook currently share costs and services in areas such as technology and maintenance of vehicles.

Sawyer said he’s hoping to keep that consolidation and add more with neighboring school districts, including the Sebago Alliance – an alliance among Westbrook, Gorham, Windham, Raymond and Bonny Eagle schools to share such things as a $800,000 in federal grant money for staff training.

Sawyer doesn’t want to see school districts get too big, however, and would like to see them limited to about 4,000 students. Westbrook currently has about 2,500 students in its district. Sawyer said he would be in favor of combining with another local district, such as Gorham, to share some administrative functions such as superintendent offices, business departments and day care for special education students.

At the moment, however, Sawyer has no clear idea of what the final decision in Augusta will be, a main reason why he was looking forward to hearing from Gendron Wednesday night.

“I have spent a lot of time analyzing all the data because it keeps changing all the time,” said Sawyer. “And I haven’t talked with Gendron because she’s been so busy.”

According to David Connerty-Marin, Gendron’s spokesman, the governor’s plan and the Education Committee’s plan are at the forefront of discussions in Augusta at the moment. Connerty-Marin said the Appropriations Committee could decide to combine the two plans, but it could also choose one of the other plans already introduced by legislators or write a new one of its own.

Crellin is waiting to see what comes out of the committee meetings. “My sense is there’s still a lot of maneuvering to come,” he said.

Connerty-Marin said he thinks the Education Committee’s plan is not specific enough and doesn’t streamline the state’s school districts as much as the governor’s plan.

The governor’s plan calls for reducing excess school administration while cutting state aid to local districts by $36.5 million. He hopes to achieve that by cutting the existing 290 school districts to 26 by school year 2008-2009. The Education Committee’s proposal would create around 100 districts in 2009-2010.

The Education Committee took a more cautious approach to school consolidation than the governor, saying first there should be planning alliances that would find $36.5 million in savings in the 2008-2009 school year through cooperation on non-instructional services. Those alliances would then recommend consolidation plans to create districts no smaller than 1,200 students by 2009-2010. Communities whose schools would be consolidated would vote to reject or accept the plan in November 2008.

Victoria Wallack of the State House News Service contributed to this report.