Schools key to rural community Union 60’s efforts to share services, reduce costs predate consolidation

loading...

GREENVILLE – In an interview for the Union 60 superintendent’s job nearly two years ago, Heather Perry recalled town and hospital officials using the “three-legged stool” analogy to explain the connection among the school, hospital and community.

Each branch represented a leg of the stool. “If any leg breaks, the whole stool falls,” Perry was told.

Perry and local officials now are trying to stop the stool from wobbling or ultimately collapsing under Gov. John Baldacci’s school administrative reorganization plan, a plan that mirrors what Union 60 and two other partners already had spearheaded.

Long before the state’s reorganization plan become law, administrators in Union 60, SAD 13 (Bingham) and SAD 12 (Jackman) had started a grass-roots effort to share services for property tax relief.

As a result, Greenville and Jackman schools share a foreign language instructor and partner with a librarian, and the Jackman and Bingham schools share a music instructor and a technology coordinator.

The three districts also had formed the Northwest Education Service District to begin consolidating administrative services. Their efforts won them a $25,000 Department of Education school efficiency grant.

“It just worked. We’re all in a somewhat isolated community and have very similar issues,” Perry said. She pointed out that Greenville, which has a combined K-12 student population of 270, is more than 30 miles from the nearest high school.

To share their advances, Greenville School Committee member Richard Gould and Perry met with Baldacci earlier in the year. Pleased with their progress to reduce costs, Baldacci told them it was an example of what he wanted to see statewide, Perry recalled.

In August, Perry and Gould shared their local regionalization plan with Department of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron. Perry said Gendron was presented a “polished” report with a budget that showed NESD could save $360,000 through its own efforts.

Not long after that visit, however, Baldacci announced his statewide plan to create regional school units, according to Gould.

“I actually had the idea they were willing to work with us, but looking back at it now, I think they had already made up their minds and were meeting with us to simply pacify us,” Gould said Saturday.

Town Manager John Simko, too, was disappointed that state officials disregarded the region’s efforts and forged ahead with their own plan. “I am hopeful the state will recognize that this cookie-cutter approach to administrative consolidation is ineffective and undermines the needs of rural schools,” he said recently.

Under the structure of the NESD presented to Gendron, the communities would have shared a central office, a superintendent, and a special education director for a combined student population of 680, according to Perry. She said the superintendents were willing to move in that direction after months of discussion.

With that progress and the earlier encouragement from Baldacci, local officials had hoped the DOE would allow the arrangement to continue under the new law. The DOE, however, advised them to include Anson in the proposed RSU to create a combined student population of 1,300, Perry said. The addition of another community to the mix would void previous agreements, she noted.

“We understand the need to be efficient. We have to be efficient in order to be responsive to our community, but this law is not going to create efficiencies for the town of Greenville,” Perry said.

The DOE did accept Greenville’s letter of intent to join districts in the Dover-Foxcroft and Guilford areas, Perry said. A third letter of intent to join Madison, Anson, Bingham and Jackman is being revised, Perry said. Neither is favored by the community, she said.

While Union 60 also has an option to become an independent school, local officials hope a statewide effort to abolish the governor’s regionalization plan is embraced. If it’s not, Sens. Peter Mills, R-Cornville, and Douglas Smith, R-Dover-Foxcroft, have filed special legislation that, if approved, would allow the three communities to form an RSU with the Unorganized Territory in the Moosehead Lake region, which would add about 70 more students to the unit.

“It appeals to me because it’s a workable solution to the Greenville area,” Smith said Saturday of the special legislation. “The law, such as it is, does not contemplate the kind of problems Greenville has to reorganize itself and to get under the minimum number of students required under the new law.”

If the state plan is not abolished, Gould believes, the special legislation would be best for the three communities. While the governor’s plan itself will not close schools, the closures could easily come once a regional school unit is formed and the town’s clout is diminished by a larger community, he said.

“It’s been very disappointing that this has been from the top down and very little effort has been made to work with us,” Gould said.

The governor’s plan is the exact opposite of past practice, according to Perry.

“We locally run our school. We locally support them, and taxpayers vote to support our schools pretty much on our own,” Perry said. As a minimum receiver, Union 60 gets only 10 percent of its budget from the state. Last year, the state paid $250,000 of the $3.4 million budget, she said. Despite the low subsidy, the community chooses to spend about $11,000 per high school student, according to Perry.

“That’s a choice of our community. They see the investment that they’re making, and they see the results of that investment in student performance, so they’re willing to pay it,” Perry said.

Greenville High School is known for its high performance and academic excellence. It was recognized by Newsweek magazine last year as one of the top 1,200 schools in the nation.

Senior Addie Pelletier said students at Greenville High definitely benefit because they receive more individualized attention and are connected to the community.

For Perry, the statistics can’t be disputed. On average, 92 percent of Greenville High School graduates attend postsecondary schools. More than 89 percent of the students participate in co-curricular activities. Out of the 95 high school students, 23 participated in Advance Placement courses, and of those who took the courses, seven were named AP scholars. The school was one of the top 20 in the state in SAT scores last year. Students consistently score at or above the minimum requirements on Maine Educational Assessment tests in both mathematics and reading.

“The Greenville School Committee and the community of Greenville are uncertain as to how our schools could dramatically improve the academic performance of our students as a member of a newly formed RSU,” Perry said.

The school also has continuously produced scholars who have gained entrance into prestigious colleges including Yale and Harvard. Many of those students who earn a degree return to Greenville to take leadership roles or to operate businesses to strengthen the local economy.

Rebecca Brown, a Bowdoin College and Harvard University graduate, returned to become principal of Greenville schools.

“This school was so critical to my success,” Brown said. “You get a sense anything is possible. It’s very inspiring for kids.”

The entire town supports the schools and student activities, and the schools serve as a community center for residents. “This school is the heartbeat of the community,” Brown said.

The school connection is important to the Charles A. Dean Memorial Hospital whose employees are parents to about 100 students enrolled in the local schools, according to hospital CEO Geno Murray. “If you don’t have a good school system, you can’t attract good employees to an area,” he said recently.

Murray said the first things people inquire about while looking to resettle in a new community are education, health, power and town services.

Without the school and hospital, the town cannot succeed in supporting its residents, visitors and businesses effectively, according to Simko.

Perry said the community is willing to make some “pretty drastic changes” to become efficient. “But what we’re not willing to do is close our schools, nor are we willing to put our schools in a position where others might close our schools for us,” she said.