Shifting students and building a new bus garage are two of the preliminary recommendations settled on Monday by the School Administrative District 61 Facilities Review Committee.

The committee, which formed this summer and includes selectmen, school and citizen representatives, will meet again Monday, Aug. 25, from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Crooked River Elementary School to finalize its recommendations, according to SAD 61 Superintendent Patrick Phillips.

Phillips said the committee’s recommendations still need to be reviewed by the SAD 61 Facilities Committee at its next meeting and the School Board after that.

“These are preliminary,” Phillips said. “There is nothing formal or binding about them.”

The recommendations include building projects, renovations and strategies to cut costs.

“The district has lost money from the state because of increasing property values,” Phillips said. “We’re going to continue to receive less money from the state over the next several years.”

One of the primary issues the district faces is an inadequate transportation facility, according to both Phillips and Andrew Madura, director of transportation, facilities and food service for the district.

Madura said the school currently operates 50 vehicles out of a two-bay transportation facility and there are safety issues with the facility being a part of the high school campus.

“The first and most important recommendation is to start moving on that soon,” Phillips said, adding that the group that did the school’s accreditation brought up the bus garage as a safety concern.

Phillips said there were a number of options for solving this issue, with one being to build a separate facility for the bus garage and the automobile technician program housed in the vocational center.

The high school, too, is overcrowded, according to Madura, who said the building was built for 450 but currently houses 800 students.

Remodeling the transportation facility space as classrooms could provide the district more space, Phillips said, and phase out old modular classrooms.

Other recommendations had to do with increasing efficiency in the district’s elementary schools.

The tentative short-term plan, Phillips said, was to consider consolidating some classes from four elementary schools to three and redistricting pupils. This would mean that children would not attend a particular school based on what town they lived in, but instead based on what school they lived closest to and what would make the most sense to even out enrollment in the schools.

Phillips said this would most likely mean that fourth- and fifth-grade students attending Crooked River Elementary School would instead attend other schools, with elementary students from Bridgton, Casco, Naples and Sebago split between Songo Locks Elementary School, Stevens Brook Elementary School and Sebago Elementary School.

The School Board may also take a look at closing Sebago Elementary School in the future, Phillips said, adding that the district would likely maintain ownership of the school after the children moved out and use it for offices and maybe rental property.

Redistricting would save money for the district by ensuring that teacher/student ratios were the same across the elementary schools and cut the number of staff members needed.

“There are some fairly significant savings there,” Phillips said, adding that he was just starting to look at informal cost analyses of the shift.

“I think we all recognize that we need to take a hard look at redistricting,” said Sebago Selectman and committee member Allen Crabtree.

The district has already begun the process of returning Casco Memorial School to the town of Casco and the committee recommended returning the Bridgton Memorial School to the town of Bridgton as soon as possible, perhaps as early as this year, Phillips said.

Casco residents voted to renovate the Casco Memorial School for use as town offices at Town Meeting earlier this summer.

The Bridgton Memorial School houses the district’s adult education programs and the Bridgton Senior College.

“I think it could be a great asset for the town,” said Bridgton Selectman Robert Woodward, also a member of the Facilities Review Committee, about accepting the Bridgton Memorial School. Though Woodward acknowledged that it wasn’t his decision to make, he guessed that the town would likely accept the building from the district.

“I’ve heard from so many groups and individuals, ‘Oh, the things we could do with it,'” Woodward said.

The central office is also on the list of spaces to evaluate, Phillips said.

Crabtree said he was very pleased with their preliminary recommendations.

He said it was eye-opening to see all the facilities necessary to carry out the district’s operations. For him, the experience reinforced the need to have a transparent and well-planned capital investment and maintenance plan that is communicated to the public.

“You’ve got that 800-pound gorilla of a school budget,” Crabtree said. “It’s a tough situation.”

“We decided that everything was going to be on the table,” Woodward said about the recommendations. “We’ve tried to find ways to do things that would be effective, efficient and looking towards the future.”