03/29/2009
enlarge
Staff photo by Andy MolloyThe 13-year-old from Whitefield can choose where he wants to attend high school in the fall. And his hometown will soon be nestled into an eight-town school district that includes Wiscasset.
Wiscasset High School is reaching into new territory to recruit public school students who can choose their high school.
Efforts to boost the school's enrollment, which has dipped more than 30 percent since 2004, figure prominently into the recruitment plan. But Maine's school district consolidation mandate is the driving force.
As a result of the state law, Wiscasset will join seven towns on July 1 to form a district that stretches from Westport Island in the south to Palermo in the north to Chelsea in the west. With the only public high school in those eight towns, Wiscasset is appealing to its new partner towns -- some located more than an hour's drive away -- to send students its way.
The recruiting efforts -- which include open house events and visits to eighth-grade students throughout the new district -- insert Wiscasset High School into a region whose students have traditionally attended Erskine Academy in South China and Cony High School in Augusta. High schools in Farmingdale, Gardiner, Newcastle, Waterville and Winslow have also attracted students from those towns.
Nearly all Whitefield students attended Wiscasset High School when the two towns had a contract. But the contract has since lapsed, and just three Whitefield students attended the high school in the 2007-08 school year, according to the Maine Department of Education.
"People who may have looked north or east to go to Erskine or Cony now can look at Wiscasset as an option," said Jen Williams, a Spanish teacher who organized the open house event that Jewett attended on Tuesday.
Each student from the Sheepscot Valley district who attends Wiscasset High School saves the district from paying the more than $8,000 in tuition it would pay to out-of-district high schools. Municipalities -- and in Chelsea's case, parents -- assume tuition costs above the Sheepscot district's rate and rates set by existing inter-district contracts.
"They would come to Wiscasset at no charge," said Principal Susan Poppish. "They could make that choice, thus saving potentially their town a lot of money."
In addition, she said, parents would have a voice in school matters through the regional school unit's school board.
"They have membership on the RSU board," Poppish said. "They don't have that anywhere else."
Wiscasset High School would benefit from the extra students, Poppish and Williams said.
"When you get smaller, it's harder to retain comprehensive programs," Poppish said. "We're still doing that, but adding a few more students to the mix would not be anything but an asset to us. We have the capacity to take more students."
The high school is working on transportation arrangements for students from the school system's Augusta-area towns, she said.
The 250-student Wiscasset High is pitching itself to this pool of prospective students as the region's small school option. Cony High School teaches nearly 1,000 students while Erskine has approximately 800.
"We've tried to maintain our comprehensiveness, yet at the same time kind of thrive in a small school setting," Williams said.
Despite the scope of Wiscasset's appeal, attracting additional students to the town's high school could prove difficult.
In the towns that have school choice, said University of Maine education professor Gordon Donaldson, the provision is steeped in tradition.
"We've had a form of choice in secondary education in Maine for 150 years, basically," Donaldson said. "Towns have been able to tuition their kids to academies forever."
Erskine Headmaster Michael McQuarrie said Augusta-area students' interest in the academy remains strong. Chelsea parents, who sent 19 students to Erskine during the 2007-08 school year, pay 10 percent of the more than $8,000 in tuition to send their children to Erskine, he noted.
"I think our program and our standards still stand on their own," McQuarrie said. "This has been an area and a region where choice has been a heritage and I think that families will continue to see it as such."
Although Wiscasset has to contend with long-standing customs in its appeal to students, Williams said, the high school has a good chance of attracting a new pool of students.
"I think we have a great chance ... once people see what we have to offer," she said.
Still, said Poppish, it will be difficult to lure students from the farthest reaches of the eight-town, Sheepscot Valley district.
"Because of the geographic scenario, it's not an easy choice," she said. "They're not going to send kids from Somerville down here, I don't think, because it's a haul."
As Wiscasset High School competes to enroll students, a desirable situation is shaping up in the Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit, said Stephen Bowen, director of the Center for Education Excellence at the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center.
"That's obviously a very prudent thing for them to do," Bowen said of Wiscasset's recruitment efforts. "That's what you want. You want them proving their product."
Wiscasset High School appears to be among the only high schools in Maine entering the school choice fray in light of consolidation.
Winslow Senior High School has traditionally appealed to students in surrounding towns with school choice, said Principal Doug Carville. Now, Winslow is joining Vassalboro -- whose students have school choice -- in a consolidated district.
"We've always felt that there was competition to attract school choice students, healthy competition," he said. "I don't think the consolidation or any of the new governance structures are going to make anything different than it ever was in terms of trying to attract new students."
For Jewett, the eighth-grader from Whitefield, Wiscasset high school has proven its merits for one reason or another. He also considered Lincoln Academy in Newcastle.
"It's closer to where I live," he said Tuesday night, "and my parents don't have to drive me as far."
Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435
mstone@centralmaine.com
Reader comments
Click here to view or add reader comments