Christian alternative> Beliefs nurtured in small classes at Higgins Classical Institute

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CHARLESTON — Higgins Classical Institute reopened so quietly in the fall of 1994 — without advertisement or fanfare — that 2 1/2 years later people still respond to the name by asking, “Didn’t it close?”

The private secondary school closed more than 20 years ago, eight decades after it opened in 1891 at the former Charleston Academy. Higgins had lost enrollment with the state’s creation of school administrative districts.

In 1975, the Charleston campus and its classic prep-school, brick-and-stone main building became home to a small Bible college, the Faith School of Theology. Higgins lived on in a limited, one-classroom school for the children of Faith School faculty. Charleston Christian Academy also used the space.

Three years ago this month — led to Higgins, they say, by God and the oldest of their five children — Ernest and Mona-Jean Philbrick started building a nonresidential, Christian school for all 12 grades.

Every week the calls come in at the rural institute, from parents who want something different for their children. Simple word-of-mouth has been enough to double the enrollment from 40 pupils in the fall of 1994 to 80 this year. One family relocated from New Hampshire in order to send their children.

There is a waiting list year-round, and administrators expect to accept 100 pupils for the 1997-1998 school year. The school is currently limited to one ground-floor hall in the main building, with no space to spare. The Philbricks are considering how to expand within the school’s physical limitations.

“We didn’t think we would be to this point as fast as we have,” said Mona-Jean Philbrick, whose office is also a storage closet for blue graduation gowns, yearbooks and cases of soda sold in the school snack bar. “As long as kids want to come, we want to make room for them.”

And the students must want to come. If parents deliver a child who seems resistant when interviewed, his slot may be given to someone more willing.

“We have no students who do not want to be here,” Mrs. Philbrick said.

Higgins junior Chris Clement, 16, said some of his friends still don’t understand why he left public school a year and a half ago. The easygoing and articulate blond student, an aspiring commercial pilot, said he faced “a lot of pressure” to smoke and try drugs at his old high school.

“Everyone is looked at as equal here, and you have all the time in the world to do your work — there are no excuses,” he said. “A lot of my friends are still wondering why I came here. I tell them I’m a Christian, and this is what I want to do with my life.”

Mrs. Philbrick said students travel from as far away as Enfield and Newport, driven by parents who say they are dissatisfied with public schools. Higgins’ tuition starts at $1,300 per year, drops to $1,100 for the second child enrolled and $900 for the third. Several families send three or four siblings. The cost is on the low end for Christian schools in the area.

The Philbricks said they wanted to keep tuition reasonable after their own experience sending children to private school. This was made easier by an agreement with the Faith School that gave the fledgling program rent-free space.

The Higgins day begins with a hand-rung bell at 8:30 a.m., when all 80 students line up in the school’s one long hallway. Boys wear black or navy blue pants and ties and white or light blue shirts; girls have the added option of black or navy blue skirts or jumpers.

Youngsters pledge allegiance three times every morning: first to the American flag, then to the Christian flag and finally to the Bible. There are announcements about extracurricular activities, and a new parent volunteer is introduced. Within a few minutes, students are in their classrooms.

There are five full-time teachers at Higgins, including both Philbricks. Each classroom contains multiple grades but fewer than 20 students. There are a half-dozen youngsters, mostly boys, in the half-day kindergarten.

Mrs. Philbrick’s fifth- and sixth-graders begin the day standing next to their partitioned desks, reciting memorized scripture in unison. The passage is from the first chapter in the book of John. Before they begin, the teacher reminds them to stand up straight.

After the group reading, one pupil is chosen to go it alone at the head of the class. Several others look on in their Bibles to catch him if he stumbles. If perfect, he will receive 40 small wooden sticks. The sticks are part of the school’s reward system, and can be used for snack bar purchases.

The young man speaks clearly and slowly, and drops just five words from the lengthy passage. He is offered a choice: 35 sticks now, or a chance to go for 40 later. He hesitates and opts to try again.

The class moves on to a test of spelling and vocabulary. The challenging list of words includes “synthetic,” “poignant” and “menagerie.” There is not so much as a whisper in the room. Students set their own pace as they move through Higgins. Supervised by teachers, they often trade papers to make corrections or score their own work using answer keys. Education majors from the adjoining Bible college also help out as tutors.

Religion is incorporated with textbooks like “New World History,” written “in Christian perspective,” with sections highlighting religious figures and events.

Elementary students learn that life on Earth began with Adam and Eve, an approach that is consistent with their Christian upbringing, Mr. Philbrick said. Higgins also leaves sex education to parents.

“As a parent, I felt that belonged to me,” he said.

The school is nondenominational, bringing together 50 families from Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodist, Pentecostal and other churches.

“You can’t separate church and state,” Ernest Philbrick says. “You can’t expect me to give up my beliefs and morals just because I walk into a building. … I think you have to have some moral and ethical character to achieve.”

A tall and distinguished, gray-haired gentleman, Philbrick speaks seriously from behind his desk, wasting few words. His reserve seems to balance his wife’s warm and bubbly, maternal demeanor. A twinkle surfaces in his eye when she kids him.

Both credit God for the school’s success and their oldest son for first leading them to Higgins.

As a public high school freshman, a talented athlete and class officer well-liked by his peers, Jay Philbrick surprised his parents by offering to sell his new stereo to help pay for private school. So urgent was his interest, he called St. Louis to pitch the plan to his dad, who was away on business.

“He felt like something was missing,” Mr. Philbrick remembers.

The boy transferred to the former Charleston Christian Academy, then at the Higgins site. Two of his siblings followed. When Mr. Philbrick went to check up on his only child who remained in public school, he was stunned to find his son was, by his father’s standards, years behind in his education.

“Like most parents, I was busy — I assumed everything was good,” he said. “Then I found they had no foundation. They couldn’t think for themselves.”

After a tough economy squeezed him out of a longtime career in management, Mr. Philbrick started teaching at the Christian academy in 1989. His mission then, as now — the Higgins principal also runs the high school classroom — is to give students the skills “to reason things out for themselves.”

Parents of Higgins students share similar tales of disillusionment with public education. Terri Hall, chairwoman of the Charleston Board of Selectmen, brought her daughter to Higgins in 1994 after the little girl spent a year in kindergarten coloring and learning her ABCs.

All very normal kindergarten activities — but not challenging for an only child who started school knowing how to read. With two dozen pupils, the teacher simply didn’t have time to accelerate the program for Courtney Lynn, Hall said.

A Catholic school graduate herself, she calls Higgins “a blessing from heaven.” The only thing she would change about the school is its lack of a playground. It already has peewee soccer and basketball and an annual Christmas musical, winter carnival and bike-a-thon.

“Here, they work with each child to meet each child’s needs,” she said. “You know when your child comes in here in the morning, bad day or good day, her emotional and educational needs are going to be cared for.”

Sherry Burrill of Garland, Higgins’ unpaid full-time office manager, said her 7-year-old is learning right from wrong more quickly than she would in public school. Melissa Crooker, another parent volunteer, said the religious atmosphere itself is educational for her two young sons.

“Each day they’re seeing Christians work around them,” she said. “They see the difference in the way Christians handle situations.”

Michael Heath, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, said Christian schools attract families willing to sacrifice tangible assets for qualities money can’t buy.

“There are some parents who say, I’d rather have a sense of participation, an affirmation of things that are important to me, than a state-of-the-art physical plant and all teachers with degrees.

“Learning is not a function of money primarily,” Heath said. “It’s a function of concern, knowledge, love and passion for what they’re doing.”

Public schools report varying impacts from the growth at Higgins. J.K. Laux, SAD 41 superintendent, said private school enrollments have been fairly constant in the Milo area district. Fred Johnston, former principal of Charleston Elementary School, also said he observed no mass migration of students to Higgins in recent years.

But private school enrollments have increased steadily in East Corinth-based SAD 64 since the rebirth of the nearby institute. There are currently 91 district residents attending private school. There were 78 last year and 67 in 1994-1995, according to district statistics.

The trend is being tracked closely by school board members, Chairman Francis Harvey said. State money for education is allotted by a formula based in part on the number of students enrolled in each district.

“Every time we lose students, we lose state subsidy. That’s the impact,” Harvey said. “It is a concern, that schools like that and home schooling take away” state funds.

He attributes some of Higgins’ success to the school’s long history in the community, and the local alumni who may want their children to carry on family tradition. A Higgins graduate himself, Harvey met his wife at the school.

Enrollment growth at Higgins corresponds to a three-year increase in numbers of private school students in Maine. Total enrollment statewide grew 11.8 percent from fall 1993 to fall 1996, from 12,918 to 14,449 students, according to the state education department.

The Charleston school is not alone in its mission or its success. Private religious schools in Bangor include Bangor Christian Schools, St. Mary’s School, St. John’s School and Penobscot Christian School.

According to the Maryland-based Council for American Private Education, private school enrollment of 5.8 million this year represents 11.2 percent of the total students in kindergarten through grade 12 in the United States.

The council projects private school enrollment of 6.1 million by 2006.

Local enrollment trends vary by school. Bangor Christian had 191 students in 1992, and administrators expect to have that number doubled by next fall. There are 358 students this year. Tuition is $2,145 for high school.

At both Penobscot Christian and St. John’s in Bangor, however, student totals dropped off slightly this year, to 66 at Penobscot and 136, down from 180, at St. John’s. St. John’s charges $1,050 for church members, $1,600 for Catholic students from other churches and $2,150 for non-Catholics. Full-time tuition at Penobscot is $1,920.

Second-year St. John’s Principal Susan Inman said the school’s veteran staff members attribute the recent loss to regular cycles in enrollment.

“People who have been here say it’s pretty common, that it goes up for several years and then slumps,” she said. “At one time we had under 100, and it’s also been over 275. People tell me it goes in 10-year cycles.”

Seven students have graduated from Higgins so far. All have gone on to college. It’s a good record for a young program, but only time will tell how graduates truly measure up.

Higgins administrators say students arrive from public school with education gaps. Public school leaders say students who come from Christian schools have to catch up to their classmates.

Despite counterclaims of academic superiority, both sides stress that they are not in competition. Higgins can serve as a “supplement” to local schools, the Philbricks said.

“It’s an alternative,” said Leonard Ney, the Corinth area superintendent. “What parents have told me is that they make the choice for value reasons. You have to respect that.”