Wiscasset’s interim superintendent of schools Lyford Beverage is recommending grades seven and eight move next year from Wiscasset Middle School to Wiscasset High School.

The school committee is set to take up Beverage’s proposal on Oct. 23. Thursday’s meeting in the high school library starts at 6 p.m. The panel will begin talks on it and may vote that night, Committee Chairman Steve Smith said Oct. 17.

According to Smith and notes Beverage wrote to the committee, the move makes sense for a number of reasons. Among them, it could be done regardless of how the town’s three schools end up being consolidated, Smith said in Friday’s telephone interview.

Beverage’s notes, released Friday, state in part: “Since controversy is alive concerning overcrowding of either (the middle or primary school) building as a K-8 school, this move will essentially put that issue to rest. In addition, as we move toward enhancing rigor in the curriculum, this move will create much greater opportunity for grades seven and eight to accelerate studies in all disciplines.”

The high school has ample room and food service for the two grades to come there, Beverage continues. His recommended motion for committee members reads: “I move that the Wiscasset School Committee vote to assign grades seven and eight to Wiscasset High School beginning in the 2015-2016 school year.”

Sarah Ricker, athletic director and assistant principal at Wiscasset High, said she saw no downside to the middle school’s two highest grades being moved to the high school that currently serves grades nine through 12.

“I think it’s a valid idea. It makes sense, in that the transition from middle school to high school can be tough for some kids, so if they’re already here and they know the teachers, that could make it a smoother transition for them,” Ricker said in a telephone interview Oct. 17.

In addition, the move would fit well with the school department’s transition to a proficiency-based diploma, and would give younger athletes the chance to receive mentoring from the high school athletes, Ricker said.

Interviewed separately, Wiscasset Middle School Principal Bruce Scally said he would need to talk more with Beverage about the proposal before weighing in it.

Scally’s last job was interim principal at a grades seven through twelve school, Stearns Junior-Senior High School in Millinocket.

“I do know that those configurations are doable,” Scally said Friday.

“I know that they all present some benefits, and they all present some challenges,” he said.