PORTSMOUTH — With apologies to Prudence Island residents, the School Committee voted reluctantly to close the Prudence Island School, the state’s only one-room schoolhouse.

“I need to look you in the eye and tell you I need to make the vote for what I think is the right thing to do for the financial situation of the community,” said E. Richard Carpender, vice president of the School Committee.

Schools Supt. Susan F. Lusi said the move will save an estimated $75,000, or one quarter of the amount the School Committee needs to cut spending to balance its budget for the coming fiscal year, although one resident contended the savings would be about $12,850 less.

The closing will also mean that two young children now attending the island school, one now in kindergarten and another in third grade, will be expected to put in 10½ hour days in order to attend classes at the Melville Elementary School

As last night’s meeting wore on, it appeared likely the committee would also vote to keep fifth graders at their elementary schools next fall instead of sending them to the middle school, as has been the practice for many years.

Retaining the fifth grade at the elementary level, which appeared to have as many supporters as opponents, would save another $75,000.

At the outset of the meeting, School Committee President Sylvia Wedge told an audience of about 75 that she knew “many of you are unhappy.

“And so are we,” she said.

The schools’ dire fiscal straits have “not arisen overnight, but there’s been a storm brewing since the first tent meeting 5 years ago,” she said, alluding to the first attempt by a Financial Town Meeting to cut the school budget.

Had last summer’s financial meeting never taken place, Carpender said, “we would have another $300,000 in the budget and we wouldn’t be having this discussion,”Carpender said.

He referred to the net loss of current revenue resulting from the Financial Town Meeting and the subsequent legal battle, which restored most, but not all, of the original cut.

Lusi, who proposed closing the Prudence Island School, seemed pained to have to make the recommendation, although she said she had no other choice.

Lusi, herself the mother of two, told Prudence Island parents that if she were in their shoes she would homeschool the children.

“The 10-hour day is a very long day,” Lusi said.

Pat Rossi, a Prudence Island resident, described such a day.

She said the island school bus would have to pick up the children between 6 a.m. and 6:15 a.m. to meet the ferry at 6:25.

On the return trip, the children would not get home until about 4 or 4:30 p.m.

They would spend “4 1/2 hours a day hanging out and riding buses and boats,” she said.

During the current school years, the ferry has canceled rides a total of 13 days and postponed other runs, Rossi said.

Older students who are stranded have emergency money for food and cell phones to arrange to hitch rides home with island commuters who have their own boats, she said, but elementary school children cannot cope with these uncertainties.

She said the School Department would have to hire a monitor to accompany the children on all the rides on buses and boats, a cost Rossi estimated at about $12,850.

Allan Bearse, the father of one of the two children attending the island school, said it would be “impossible” for his 9-year-old son “to learn what he’s got to learn” with the pressures of getting to and from school.

His wife, Eliza Volkmann, said “we won’t be sending our son to be separated from his parents by a Bay for 10 hours. I can assure you of that.”

And Andrew Allard, the father of the other island schoolchild, said he also had “a serious issue” with the prospect of his 6-year-old daughter putting in 10-hour days between her home on Prudence and the Melville school.

Outside the meeting, Grace McEntee, a member of a committee that has been trying to devise cost-effective ways of continuing to operate the island school, warned that the issue concerns not just two families but the entire communities.

The island needs the school — a magnet for volunteerism — to remain a vibrant community, McEntee said.

If the school is closed permanently, families with young children will stay away from the island, she said.

gmacris@projo.com