Students have a choice

I read the column, “Should school districts consolidate?” (BDN, April 5). I am very much against the above. Bigger does not make better. I know this for a fact by my own experience in junior high and high school.

In my seventh- and eighth-grade years I was in a large school and kept falling behind as the teacher did not have time to spend with each individual child. Therefore, the slower students lacked the instruction they needed. I left that school and went to a smaller high school where we all got the attention we needed to keep up with the class. This is why I am for smaller schools and classes. We should not put cost per child before the education of a child.

Lamoine at one time was in a school administrative district with Ellsworth, Hancock, Trenton, Surry and Waltham. Ellsworth being the larger school had more votes than all the other schools put together. This did not work. The school district dissolved and all the schools, including Ellsworth, went back into Union 92. Ellsworth then decided it did not want to be in Union 92, so it left it and became independent with its own superintendent. This has worked very well with the other schools.

Our students now have a choice to go to any high school they choose, which was very good for the high school students as they now could go to the school that offered the subjects they were interested in plus all the other extracurricular activities that other schools did not offer.

Lamoine is better off the way it is now. If we joined with Ellsworth again the high school students would lose out on what choices they now have and some students would have to give up their special interests.

Doreen Boynton

Lamoine