ALEXANDER – As enrollment plummets and costs spiral, residents of this community west of Calais are debating whether to close their little elementary school. Similar discussions are expected all over rural Maine as the state loses more and more of its youth population.

In towns such as Alexander, the school is the very heartbeat of the community.

Located on Route 9, the five-room Alexander Elementary School, with its combined gymnasium and cafeteria, was built in 1987. Six years later, two more classrooms, a library and two conference rooms were added.

The school population at its peak was 103 pupils; it was 66 this year. When the school is not in session, the building becomes a community center for weddings and receptions.

The new school was built when Calais, Washington County’s largest community, was thriving. In the late 1980s, retail businesses were prospering and new stores were opening. Calais real estate sales flourished, and it was difficult to find a good rental or a cheap house. Alexander became a bedroom community.

Then, the economic picture started to change. Canadian shopping slowed and stores closed.

The ripple effect was felt in small surrounding towns such as Alexander. A change in the state’s school subsidy formula placed an added tax burden on local property owners, and the Calais economic downturn forced many young married couples to leave the area in search of employment elsewhere, causing the pupil population in kindergarten through eighth grade to dwindle.

According to the 1990 U.S. Census, Alexander had a population of 475 people with 152 of them under the age of 18. Although the population had increased by 39 people, according to the 2000 Census, the number of youths under 18 had dropped to 127.

The school committee has explored several possibilities, one of which is to start a program for 4-year-olds that eventually could bolster the number of pupils in the school and bring in tuition money from Baring, Charlotte and Meddybemps.

Another option would be to close the school and send the pupils to Calais. The tuition cost plus the heating and maintenance costs that would continue at the Alexander school building would be around $590,000. That would represent a savings of around $140,000 over the cost of operating the local school.

Even though many educators believe that smaller is better, Ted Carter, chairman of the school committee, believes small rural schools are being penalized by the state. “What is happening in eastern and northern Maine is that we are being forced to close these schools for financial reasons, and we are not getting any help from the state,” he said.

Principal Lynn Silk said that what makes the school so attractive to pupils and parents is the sense of community it creates. “These kids care about each other, and they take care of each other. We do not have drugs and alcohol in our school,” she said.

School committee member Carla Jundt agreed. She said pupils had flourished academically at the school because of its small size. Over the years, pupils from the school have gone on to attend Harvard and the University of Hawaii. Alumni include lawyers and engineers.

Alexander parents believe they are in the battle of their youngsters’ educational lives as they fight to keep their school open.

Alan Majka, who has a 4-year-old daughter, said one of the reasons he and his wife decided to settle in Alexander was the reputation of the elementary school. They moved to the area from Florida.

“We looked at teacher-student ratios, the number of teachers with advanced degrees, the beautiful facilities and the parental involvement … those kinds of things,” he said. “It was a lot different from Florida where you might see 35 kids in a classroom and problems with crime and drugs,” he said.

Michele Dupuis-Clarke, vice chairman of the school committee and the mother of four children ranging in age from 4 to 14, said she and her husband were living in Rhode Island when they decided to move to a community that offered a more “close-knit family way of life.”

Heather Erickson, whose two sons are 10 and 12, said she liked the feel of a small school. “Statistics show that kids who come from smaller schools excel when they get into high school. Look at the honor roll at Woodland High School [in Baileyville] and Calais High School. You’ll see Alexander kids are at the top of those honor rolls as those from Charlotte and Robbinston,” she said.

Erickson said that unlike some schools, Alexander had a large Parent-Teacher Group that holds fund-raisers for the school, writes grants and assists in and out of the classroom.

The parents agreed that closure of the school would be a great loss to the town’s sense of community. “It’s what’s keeping us from becoming a retirement-vacation community,” Majka added.

While he would like the school to remain open, Majka said he doesn’t want a rift to develop between parents and older property owners. “In the discussions I’ve had so far, every elderly person I’ve talked to say they strongly support the school,” he said.

But not everyone agrees the town can afford a major hike in taxes to fund next year’s budget.

Longtime resident Maxine Seavey said there were people on fixed incomes who were living just on the edge of poverty. “The elderly in the town are not going to let you know how desperate they are, because they are proud they’ve never gotten food stamps or gone on any of the rolls,” she said.

Seavey said although the elderly love the children, she warned that they could not continue to pay more and more taxes. “I believe tuitioning [to another school] is a lot cheaper, and then we could rent the school out,” she said.

But Carter warned that if the pupils were sent to another elementary school, the town would lose its local control over the quality of education. “We could be in a situation where we could be tuitioning all our children out and be at the mercy of what the other towns want … and we wouldn’t have any say in that.”