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FORT KENT — Quiet and kind of shy, the boy quickly admits to wanting to be a policeman — maybe a dentist, he adds after some more thought. He likes the lights on police cruisers and his father is in the dental field.
Chapin Scaggs, 5, one of 43 kindergartners in Rose Charette’s class at Fort Kent Elementary School, will graduate from high school in the year 2010 and from college in 2014.
If he remains in Fort Kent, Chapin will be like thousands of other children who can complete their elementary education, get a high school diploma and acquire a bachelor’s degree without leaving Pleasant Street, a quiet, residential neighborhood in the heart of this northern Maine community on the Canadian border.
Pleasant Street is a prominent residential area in Fort Kent. Lined with majestic trees and manicured lawns, it lives up to its name. Its homes are well cared for and, for the most part, decades old. Half a mile from the Canadian border, the street lies off the town’s business district, along the west bank of the Fish River, just south of the confluence with the St. John River.
Fort Kent is the only place in Maine, and one of the few in the country, where bright young minds can get 18 years of education, all within a quarter of a mile.
The opportunity has been here in Fort Kent for decades. Today it involves a Head Start program at the Fort Kent Armory, the Fort Kent Elementary School — open since 1969 — SAD 27’s Community High School, and the University of Maine at Fort Kent.
Before 1969, pupils who attended Fort Kent’s “Old Model School,” an elementary school opened in 1909 to give practical training to prospective teachers, had the same opportunity.
Except for UMFK’s physical education facilities, all of the school buildings are on the same side of the street.
Those seeking a greater, perhaps more permanent, attachment to Pleasant Street, also can be baptized, married and buried at Christ Congregational Church, located between Pleasant Street and UMFK’s Powell Hall.
At least two other places in the United States offer the same educational opportunity, according to The Boston Globe.
In Reading, Pa., students can go all the way to obtain a degree from Albright College on 13th Street. In Cincinnati, students can go from kindergarten through college on Clifton Avenue, where the University of Cincinnati is located.
Suzelle Audibert Jandreau, a teacher for 17 years at Fort Kent Elementary School, gained all of her formal education on Pleasant Street. Now she teaches second grade there.
“I enjoyed my educational experiences — so much so, it made me want to be a teacher,” said Jandreau, during an interview at the school. “Teaching is what I’ve always wanted to do.”
Jandreau started her education at the Old Model School, moved to Fort Kent Elementary School in 1969, graduated from CHS, and received a bachelor’s degree in education at UMFK in 1980.
Offered two positions to teach that same year, one in New Hampshire and the other in Fort Kent, the young teacher chose the Fort Kent position in order to remain near her aging parents.
“I never left town,” she said. “I wanted to stay around. I don’t believe I lost anything, educationally, by staying here. I have never regretted it. I love my job and the area. I am still pleased with the decisions I made over the years.”
Married to Ron Jandreau of Fort Fairfield, Jandreau has two children. Adam is in the fifth grade, and Audrey is in the fourth grade, both at Fort Kent Elementary School with their mom. Each weekday, Jandreau drives her children to and from school.
“I wish them a good day in the morning and they meet in my room after school,” said the teacher, adding that during the day, she doesn’t see them much because the children are in an opposite wing of the school. There was a time a couple of years ago, however, when she was teaching her daughter.
Jandreau admitted that, someday, she would like to see Adam and Audrey attend her alma mater.
With a population of 4,268, Fort Kent is the center of SAD 27, a seven-town school district. Its people are mostly farmers, woods and millworkers, and the town has the only U.S. post-secondary educational institution in the border area.
UMFK’s forerunner, the Madawaska Training School at Fort Kent, was approved by the Legislature in 1878. It was known for more than four decades as “la grande ecole a Fort Kent [the upper school].” The original building of the training school was located on the site of the present high school. New buildings for the normal school were constructed starting in 1914 in a field just north of the old building.
Before 1920, high school classes were held as a part of the training school, and those classes continued in the old building.
Students at the normal school originally received a teaching certificate after two years. In 1948, a third year was added to the program for a teaching certificate. The first four-year degrees, a bachelor of science in education, was awarded in 1961.
In 1920, the town built its own high school facility. In 1957, a new high school was built in three phases and completed in 1969.
The Fort Kent Elementary School opened in the fall of 1969 on a 15-acre site, across the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad tracks from the high school. At the time, the new building, built at a cost of $1 million, reportedly was the largest elementary school in Maine.
Gary Stevens, a native of Old Orchard Beach, graduated from UMFK in 1977 and has been an educator in SAD 27 schools for 20 years. He is principal of the the elementary school, overseeing a staff of 77 people who educate 567 pupils from kindergarten through grade eight.
“I’ve been here long enough to see kids go all the way through and graduate from UMFK,” he said during a recent interview. “I mention the possibility to new parents in the area.”
Stevens finds the opportunity for post-secondary education “good, especially for people who could not otherwise go to college.”
“UMFK has great offerings for a school its size,” he said. “The area is good for young people. It’s a rural, safe atmosphere. What they offer at UMFK is top-notch. Students can get to know the professors one on one. We have bright students go there and graduate with top honors.
“The school also has a varied cultural mix,” said the principal. “Students get a diversity of opinions and customs. They do get outside exposure.”
Smiling when asked about disadvantages, Stevens said, “Some people say we are isolated and have less activities for growth. However, I tell them I can attend cultural affairs at UMFK, Edmundston, New Brunswick, and Quebec City, which is only three hours away.”
Sandra Bernstein, SAD 27 superintendent of schools, said Fort Kent’s unique educational situation “plays out in many ways.”
“In a lot of rural area, kids don’t have the advantage of all levels [of education] — here we do,” she said. “We have UMFK on the same street. Kids can see people of all ages involved in learning, and that helps with aspirations.”
SAD 27 has several partnerships with the university to help with the in-service training of teachers and with educating high school students who attend both institutions.
“The university faculty brings us a wider range of professions and areas of professional interests,” said Bernstein. “In a visible way, it enriches programs for all children.”
She said the university presence shows “children a level beyond high school, and that’s a good thing. We have students with diversity and broad ranges [of thought]. It gives children a look at the outside, and it would not happen otherwise.”
The school superintendent said that UMFK “removes barriers, gives easier access, and makes education more of a family affair, with adults as nontraditional students, parents as learners.”
Kermit Pooler, principal at Community High School and a graduate of the university, said that UMFK, along with other schools on the street, “offers a good opportunity, financially, for kids.”
“Many of us [residents] have gone there,” he said. “It offers a good, sound edcuation and an opportunity for kids who could not afford to go elsewhere.”
CHS has had several students taking courses at both the high school and UMFK. Of the 115 students who graduated in 1997 from CHS, 74 percent have gone on to some type of post-secondary education. Thirty-five of them are attending UMFK this fall. For the 1997-98 school year, 463 students are attending CHS.
“It’s great for us to have it next door,” said Pooler. “Kids are here and there, it’s like having another wing. We also use their facilities for drama, theater and atletics, workshops for kids and adults, and we have a technology agreement with them.”
Dr. Charles Lyons, UMFK president, called the educational situation a “fantastic thing.” In 1996, UMFK had 767 traditional and nontraditional students.
“It’s one of the few in the country,” he pointed out of the educational situation. “People are thrilled with this kind of stability, the notion of pre-K through college. It provides ease and consistency.”
With it, however, comes a liability for the university.
“We have to provide a well-rounded exposure for students and the general population,” Lyons acknowledged. “The university has the responsibility to bring in music, the arts and theater.
“The whole world is not only what you see,” he said. “We can’t live in a small sphere, even if we would like to. We have a global society. Our responsibility is to provide this exposure while we have this beautiful experience in Fort Kent.”
For Chapin Skaggs, who started his education last year in preschool at Fort Kent Elementary School, college may seem light-years away. The little boy no doubt will grow up, make many friends and learn many things before he ever graduates from college.
Chapin already has some exposure to diversity. He was born in Biddeford to a mother from Madawaska. His father, a dental technician, is from Kentucky.
Before becoming a policeman or a dentist, the little boy knows, he has “to go to college.”
For now, though, said Chapin, “Mrs. Charette is doing fun stuff with us” in kindergarten.
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