Despite reprieve, closure risk looms at County grade school

BENEDICTA – When the state Department of Education announced last May that it planned to close the Benedicta Elementary School for good this June, the community mobilized to fight the decision and campaigned successfully to save the pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade facility.

Now, two months after state education officials decided to keep the unorganized territory school open, the threat of closure still looms in some people’s minds.

“I think that the decision not to close the school has made things a little easier around here,” Cecily MacKinnon, a special education teacher at the school, said Saturday. “The kids are certainly more at ease, but I think that the threat is always there. They [the DOE] told us that we have to keep an enrollment of 20 pupils to continue to keep our school open. That’s so difficult, because you can’t always control enrollment.”

Last year, state education officials cited declining enrollment as a major factor for closing the Benedicta school and sending the pupils eight miles away to Katahdin Elementary School. Annual enrollment had dropped from 43 pupils in 1993 to 18 in 2003. By last December, however, more than 20 pupils were enrolled at the school.

At the time, Benedicta residents were perplexed by the threatened closure since funding for unorganized territory schools is a direct tax on property owners in the territories and does not come out of the state’s General Fund.

After area parents formed a collective called the Educating Kids Locally Support Group and lobbied representatives, senators and education officials to keep the school open, Maine Education Commissioner Susan Gendron reversed her decision. She warned, though, that she would reconsider the school’s status if enrollment dipped any further.

On Saturday, Lisa Ammerman watched as her 4-year-old son, Ian, wobbled around on a pair of cross-country skis at Benedicta Elementary School’s annual ski celebration. She was among the parents who fought diligently to keep the school open.

“My son is not even a student here yet, and we have been welcomed into this community with open arms,” she said. “My son will start here in September, and he already has friends at this school. I think this is a wonderful school and a great community.”

“I think that keeping the school open is a good thing for the community,” said 11-year-old Ashley Stubbs, who is spending her last year as a pupil at Benedicta. “Even though I am going to Katahdin [Elementary] next year, it is great for all of the students behind me.”

Despite the stressful fight to save the school, MacKinnon said Saturday that she thought the experience served as a valuable lesson for the Benedicta pupils.

“It was a wonderful civics lesson for our kids,” she said. “They got to see firsthand what people can do when they join together and fight for something that they believe in. I think it was good for them to see what we can achieve when we move forward as a united front.”