Education leader brings agenda to Howland

HOWLAND – Declining school enrollments is one of the issues Maine’s top education leader will discuss with several area school officials tonight.

“We are going to have to make some changes for a future that is going to look different because of our size and limited resources,” said J. Duke Albanese, commissioner of the Department of Education.

Albanese said the 1960s brought a wave of new school administrative districts. “Now, it’s going to be a new era,” he said. “We are going to have to think about ways we can regionalize further.”

Albanese said he will bring a lot of information to the meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Howland Town Hall. He said time would be reserved at the end of the meeting for public comment.

Invited to the meeting are officials of SAD 41 (Milo area), SAD 67 (Lincoln area), SAD 30 and School Union 110 (Lee area), Union 113 (East Millinocket, Medway and Woodville), Millinocket and Vocational Northern Penobscot Region 3.

He said some of the demographics for Maine are worrisome. “Our enrollment trends in virtually every community in Maine are on the downward slide,” he said. The state has the lowest number of women who are of childbearing age since the 19th century, he noted.

At the same time, he said the competition for state money to renovate and fund new facilities is unbelievable. “The State Board [of Education] and the department are under great pressure to make sure that whatever state monies are available to improve school facilities is used wisely,” he said.

Meanwhile, SAD 31 Superintendent Keith Cook is encouraging district residents to attend.

Cook said there has been lots of talk about consolidating smaller schools into larger ones. He said it is important that residents hear both sides of the issue.

He said the proposal for a new high school is intended to be a 50- to 75-year solution. SAD 31 is on the state’s priority list for funding.

Cook said there is a tremendous amount of documented national research that clearly demonstrates the value, if not the superiority, of small schools for educating young people. He said the Small Schools Project at the Center for Reinventing Public Education says few effective small schools serve more than 400 students and many of the best schools serve no more than 200.

“The concept of small schools is based on the premise that in contrast to large, factory-model schools, small schools can create a more intimate learning environment that is better able to address the needs of those within the school,” he said quoting from a report.

Citing another report, Cook said large-scale quantitative studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s firmly established small schools to be more productive and effective than large ones. He said the reports show students learn more, make more rapid progress, behave better and drop out less.