Educators, school administrators, local elected board members, politicians, state officials and parents have all weighed in on the law mandating school consolidation in Maine.

Conspicuously absent has been the voice of those most affected by the law: the children in our schools.

In recent weeks, Bangor Daily News reporters asked high school students from areas that stand to be most affected what they think of the pending consolidation.

Here’s what they said:

Ellsworth area

Ellsworth High School students Kara Beal and Dominique Keefe concede they don’t know everything about the state’s school consolidation plan, but as students who stand to be affected, they wonder why their input wasn’t solicited.

“I think a lot of students don’t necessarily feel the need to learn about the issue because they feel like they don’t have a direct say,” said Keefe, 17, a senior.

Beal, 16, a junior, added, “Most of us don’t really know how it’s going to affect us, but I don’t know that anyone does.”

Interviewed recently during their lunch break, Beal and Keefe both said the effort to consolidate Maine’s school districts doesn’t seem like it’s going to accomplish its goal of saving money.

Even if it does, Keefe said, “I don’t think an effective way to address a school’s specific needs is by centralizing control. Needs are different for every school.”

Beal also said it doesn’t make sense for a superintendent in Ellsworth to make decisions for students in a district 40 miles away.

Ellsworth likely will be indirectly affected by consolidation in the sense that the city’s district is expected to annex a nearby district, such as Union 92, which comprises several smaller towns.

That could have both benefits and drawbacks, according to Beal.

“For those smaller districts, they might have access to programs or extracurricular activities that they didn’t have before,” she said. “But if it’s not saving enough money, those activities are probably going to be the first things cut.”

erussell@bangordailynews.net

664-0524

Millinocket region

Mike Rioux, 17, of Millinocket said he would love to see his school, Stearns High School, consolidate with another school, such as East Millinocket’s Schenck High School. He runs cross country for Schenck already as part of the Katahdin region’s efforts to bolster offerings at both schools.

“I think kids don’t have a problem with it,” Rioux said of consolidation. “We [both schools] have always been rivals, but it’s time for a change.

“Our schools are shrinking,” the junior added. “I think if we consolidated we [students] would have a better opportunity to explore our interests.”

With just one more year to go before graduating, Rioux, an Eagle Scout who plays for his school’s band and jazz band, said he has nothing to gain by wishing for consolidation except perhaps the desire to see education improve for his fellow students.

Brett Baker, a 16-year-old junior at Stearns, disagrees. He likes the smaller classroom sizes and the more intimate relationships he has with his teachers at Stearns. He fears he would lose those things if schools consolidated.

“In a smaller school, you have smaller classrooms,” he said, “and I don’t want to have to travel out of town to go to school.”

Billy Eurich, a 15-year-old freshman at Stearns, sides with Baker, but for different reasons.

“The [consolidated] school would be too big, and for sports, a lot of people would get cut [from teams] or they wouldn’t get a lot of playing time,” Eurich said.

That’s one of the problems with how consolidation is being presented, the students said. People have the impression that consolidation means school closings, loss of school and community identities, and traveling dozens of miles from home to attend classes.

It would be more successful, they said, if it could happen without that.

“I want to graduate as a Minuteman,” said Cory Barnett, a 17-year-old junior at Stearns.

nsambides@bangordailynews.net

794-8215

Pittsfield area

Lydia Fortin, 16, is a junior at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, a private college-preparatory school where SAD 53 tuitions its students.

“You can look at this two ways,” Fortin said recently. “I think some local schools may end up closing – not high schools – but smaller schools. That would not be good.”

Balancing that loss, Fortin said, would be the MCI agreement with Madison High School should the two high schools be in a new regional school unit, which would allow for the two schools to offer a wider range of classes. She said it would be beneficial to students in both schools to be able to take a telecommunication course at one or the other.

“However, we really can’t predict anything until it happens,” she said. Fortin said that since MCI is a small school with about 450 students, the classes “are really tight.” She said it would be unfortunate if athletes began switching schools for playing advantages and thought most students would opt to stay with their classmates.

bdnpittsfield@verizon.net

487-3187

Penquis region

Erica Lyford, 17, a Penquis Valley High School of Milo junior, believes students don’t have enough information about school consolidation, but said she supports it.

Consolidating regional schools under one umbrella would provide more opportunities for students, Lyford said. “I do think it would be good to have more teachers and more students together, because it would make more opportunities for classes and stuff.” Lyford also has no problem consolidating with a rival school. Students should look beyond the rivalry because it will no longer matter after high school, she said.

Greenville High School junior John Muzzy, 17, does have a problem with consolidation. “I’m worried that consolidation could affect the local control that we have.” Transportation would be an issue if student activities and sports were combined with another school, he said. Muzzy, who also worries about the effect the consolidation might have on the local hospital, said students have been somewhat overlooked in the plan since it will affect them the most.

Not so, according to Derek McKenney, 16, a sophomore at Piscataquis Community High School in Guilford. He said school consolidation will not affect his education. As a student representative on the school board, McKenney said he understood that only administration will be consolidated. “We’ll still be PCHS and we’ll still have our heritage,” he said.

Dexter Regional High School sophomore Catherine Stauch, 15, wants to hang onto that heritage, but she’s not too sure that will be the case. The school consolidation plan is “a lot of change too fast.”

“Dexter is a small school, but in sports we’re rivals with Guilford [PCHS] and I think that would create some tension there.” She enjoys the small classes and the personal attention she receives at DRHS and fears that might not continue under a regional atmosphere.

dianabdn@verizon.net

876-4579

Belfast area

SAD 34 in Belfast is composed of six communities and is in the process of formulating a consolidation plan with three-town SAD 56 in Searsport. Students at Belfast Area High School were not enamored of the idea.

“Our school needs to worry about our problems; we don’t need Searsport’s problems dropped on us. I think Belfast is fine the way it is,” said Leanne Donovan, 17, a senior from Morrill.

Another Morrill resident, Shawn Manchester, 16, a sophomore, said he did not like the fact that schools within the same district would be forced to compete with each other in sporting events. Manchester said he prefers things the way they are.

“I don’t know much about it, but from what they are saying it sounds pretty dumb. I definitely would not want to be connected to other schools as one district. It would be the same district going against the same district in sports. Plus, they’d be overloading all the work on one superintendent. I don’t think that is very smart.”

wgriffin@bangordailynews.net

338-9546

MDI area

At Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor, a small group of students said that they have mixed feelings about the state’s consolidation mandate.

Lauren Erickson, 17, of Mount Desert said consolidation would expose students to a greater swath of society by combining smaller schools into larger ones, where they would have contact with more students. The classes might be larger, she said, but it might help prepare students for college, where class sizes often are larger than in high school settings.

“The classes at [the University of Maine] are a lot bigger,” agreed Marcelle Hutchins, an 18-year-old senior.

Erickson, also a senior, will graduate before consolidation is implemented, but she said she wouldn’t want to have to travel to Ellsworth, the nearest municipality with a high school, to attend classes. Extracurricular events would be another concern. She would be less likely to attend night basketball games, for example, if she lived farther away from her school and either had to stay at school for the event or had to travel farther to get home and back.

“Right now, I live 20 minutes away from school,” she said, sitting in MDI High’s library with a couple of friends. “It definitely would affect that.”

The concern most frequently raised by local opponents of the consolidation law is that it will reduce local control by giving oversight of elementary schools to the island’s multitown district, rather than having each individual town control its own local grammar school. But this concern didn’t seem to worry the small group of students interviewed recently at MDI High.

“I wouldn’t see a problem with that,” said Nate Ward, a 16-year-old junior.

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

460-6318

Camden region

Erika Blauth, a 16-year-old senior at Camden Hills Regional High School, said she understands the state is trying to save money with consolidation, but she doesn’t believe the plan is doing any good.

“There are a lot of glitches in the writing of it,” she said of the legislation. “It’s doing more harm.”

A student member of the Five-Town Community School District board, Blauth sees problems with one large board for different schools.

“If there’s one board for many schools, it will seem more impersonal for each school,” she said.

“From an athlete’s point of view,” said Blauth, who plays field hockey and tennis, “consolidation will cut down on the number of teams. There won’t be as much competition.”

She also worries that problems of one local school could become a problem for a whole district even though the other schools lack that particular problem.

gchappell@bangordailynews.net

236-4598

Bucksport region

Elizabeth Beeson, 17, of Bucksport, a junior at Bucksport High School, said she didn’t know a lot about the new consolidation law, but said it seems like a good idea.

“If they can reduce costs for administration, we could take that money to try to improve education; we could hire new teachers,'” she said. “There’s always room for improving education.”

Having said that, however, Beeson said the towns should be allowed to determine how they consolidate.

“The state doesn’t know the towns involved,” she said. “The towns know how everything works. They should definitely have a say in how they consolidate.”

Sophomore Vince Tymoczko, 15, of Bucksport is concerned that consolidation might bring more students from other towns into the high school. It’s an issue of funding, he said.

“If they bring them in, we have to accommodate them,” he said. “That might hinder us from solving some of our own problems.”

Diverting funds to deal with larger student populations might limit work on needed projects such as a bigger library or newer facilities, he said.

“We’re a pretty small school,” Tymoczko said. “Making us bigger is a problem.”

Reducing the number of school districts will likely result in a loss of jobs in Maine, which, he said, is a “bad idea” that will put more stress on the remaining administrators.

“They’re going to be less familiar with the smaller schools and won’t be able to concentrate on the smaller issues,” he said.

Junior class President Dan Burpee, 16, of Bucksport also is concerned that consolidation might result in a larger school population. Although the current plan for Bucksport’s RSU, which also includes the towns of Orland, Prospect and Verona that already tuition students to the high school, would keep the student population much the same, initial talks had paired Bucksport with Searsport. That move would have increased the number of students in a merged high school considerably.

While it might make sense to bring in some smaller schools, Burpee said he did not want to see the school get too big.

“Everybody likes it the way it is; it’s not too busy,” he said. “I like it small like it is; it’s right for the school and the town.”

Gabe Souza, 17, a junior from Bucksport, works part time for the local newspaper The Enterprise and said he’s been able to sit in on meetings and to talk with the superintendent about the issues involved in consolidation.

“I think I understand it pretty well, and putting it all together, I don’t see any cost savings.”

Although the law prohibits any staff reductions in the first year of the new regional school union, Souza anticipated potential job losses for teachers in the succeeding years. He said there will be additional costs involved in equalizing salaries between the two towns in the RSU that have schools.

Bucksport has a large number of educational technicians, he said, but the ed techs in Orland are paid more. It will be difficult for the RSU to deal with that issue, he said.

“Where’s the meeting point?” he said. “They’ll have to have the labor unions in there talking. It seems like it will be a big mess to me.”

BDN writers Eric Russell, Nick Sambides, Sharon Kiley Mack, Diana Bowley, Walter Griffin, Bill Trotter, George Chappell and Rich Hewitt contributed to this report.