BDN – Greenville’s small school a key to its community
The BDN features a very good front page article this morning about how well the Greenville school has done despite its small size. Check out these statistics from the article:
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…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.
How did Greenville do this, by creating a single enormous school district? No. They worked with surrounding towns, on their own, and created an Education Service District, much as MHPC described in a research piece from nearly a year ago. Again, from the article:
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.
The three school units making up the Education Service District projected that they would “save $360,000” through the sharing of educational services using their service district approach.
Today, despite all this, the school system is struggling to comply with the new state law. Community members are already pledging to resist the state’s forced consolidation mandate.
Read the entire article here.