Class dismissed CLOSING OF BENEDICTA SCHOOL BITTERSWEET FOR STUDENTS, STAFF

BENEDICTA – On Monday, for the last few students at the Benedicta Elementary School, it truly was closing time.

The doors they walked through at the start of the school year last August have closed behind them – permanently.

The Benedicta Elementary School is now closed for good, the result of a dwindling school population and the rising costs of educating children and maintaining the school.

Last March, the state Department of Education recommended that the tiny, unorganized territory school in Aroostook County be closed at the end of the 2008 school year.

Tucked away in this rural community of about 225 people, the school is a major focal point of the community. The 32-year-old facility provides a panoramic view of the mountains and forests to the west and serves as the town’s meeting place and recreation facility.

Last March there were 20 pupils at what was then a pre-kindergarten through seventh-grade school.

As its doors closed Monday afternoon, the school had just six pupils in kindergarten through fifth grade.

The pupils who vacate the school after its anticipated closing will be absorbed into Katahdin Elementary School in SAD 25, which is approximately 10 miles from the township in Stacyville. The school’s five part-time employees and one full-time teacher will be going in different directions.

Pupils from BES now attend high school in SAD 25.

“I think the children are anxious, but they are excited for a new beginning and to meet new friends,” Paige Cunningham, an education technician at the school, said Monday as she watched four of the six pupils exercise in the gymnasium. “They had their ‘step-up day’ on Friday where they saw their new school and met their new teachers. They all seemed to enjoy it.”

Principal Shelley Lane, who also is the superintendent of the state’s unorganized territory schools, agreed. She hosted a barbecue for the Benedicta students on Monday afternoon.

“The kids have been great,” she said. “Kids always have a wonderful way of looking at things, and these kids are no exception. They are excited, and I am excited for them, but also sad about the closure of the school.”

Whispers of a possible closing have been going on for years in the tiny community, which deorganized in 1987 to allow the state to take over the school.

At a meeting in 2001, residents voiced concern over both the declining enrollment and the increasing cost of sustaining the school. By that time, enrollment was half of what it had been 15 years earlier.

The school last faced the threat of closure in 2004, when Education Commissioner Susan Gendron announced plans to close the school in June 2005. The decision faced opposition from a number of parents who formed a collective called the Educating Kids Locally Support Group and successfully lobbied state representatives, senators and education officials to keep the school open.

Some Benedicta parents have said they could not understand why the state wanted to close the school, since education costs in unorganized territories are funded solely by property owners in the territories. Funding does not come out of the state’s General Fund.

The state has contended that taxpayers in unorganized territories pay into a state fund to administer services in unorganized territories including education, so that money must be used as effectively as possible.

The state also has acknowledged that taxpayers will not see much of a savings on their tax bill once the facility is closed.

The state-owned school building will now be put up for sale, according to Lane.

Although parents have been upset about the school’s closure, the students seemed excited Monday about making the move to a new school.

“I am happy about it, but I’m a little anxious,” Noah Bracey, a 9-year-old pupil from Silver Ridge, said Monday. Bracey will be in the fifth grade next year and has attended BES since kindergarten. “I liked the step-up day. I saw where the cafeteria is and where my classroom will be.”

He added that he felt the rest of his schoolmates were excited as well, a theory that 7-year-old Ian Ammerman agreed with. The soon-to-be third-grader has never attended another school.

“I feel good about [the new school,]” said the Benedicta resident. “I am looking forward to math.”

Holly Bracey-Ritchie, 11, will be in the sixth grade next year. She currently is the oldest child at BES.

“I am looking forward to being around kids my own age,” the Silver Ridge resident said Monday.

jlbdn@ainop.com

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