Group seeks to halt school closures

BRUNSWICK – Betty Hyde, 80, still lives near the school she attended as a child and is upset at the thought that it may be closed.

“It makes me madder than heck,” said Hyde, who insists that the Hawthorne School remains a vital part of the neighborhood and should be kept in operation.

Hyde’s stance has won support from historic preservationists, who are pushing for a halt to the closures of old neighborhood schools in Maine.

Many communities trying to provide educational opportunities with limited budgets have been shutting down historic neighborhood schools and replacing them with newer, larger buildings.

Maine Preservation, a statewide nonprofit group, says the old schools have a lot to offer, not only as historic landmarks but as traditional centers of their communities.

The organization launched a campaign this year that calls on towns and cities to halt the closures.

State officials say retaining schools can save taxpayer dollars while battling suburban sprawl that often accompanies construction of schools on the outskirts of a municipality.

State policy-makers have taken steps to provide some financial incentives to communities to restore and renovate neighborhood schools.

The city of Portland, which wants to upgrade 14 of its aging neighborhood school buildings without closing any of them, hopes to receive some renovation money from that new fund.

A neighborhood school doesn’t have to be really old or qualify for the National Register of Historic Places to have historical value to a community, said Roxanne Eflin, executive director of Maine Preservation, who said the fate of such buildings should not be decided by school boards alone.

“We’re urging the entire community to participate in this conversation,” Eflin said.

But Dale Douglas, executive director of the Maine School Management Association, said that school districts have to make educational needs a priority in deciding whether to close an aging school.

“They are first and foremost schools,” Douglas said.

The issue of closing neighborhood schools is not one that Maine alone is grappling with. It’s happening nationwide, says Gary Kozel, a spokesman with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C.

“This is an emerging national story that’s really beginning to touch the hearts and minds and we hope the souls of people across the country,” he said.

Maine Preservation and the National Trust both prefer that the historic buildings remain schools, but they say converting them for another community use is better than simply abandoning them.