Maine’s critics have been known to observe that we can be small-minded people. We don’t feel comfortable with big government or big organizations. Town meeting is where we get involved politically, not Augusta or Washington. Invariably when some businessman rides into town with a big idea that’s going to generate millions of new tax dollars and hundreds of new jobs, the proposal gets shot down before the developer realizes what’s hit him. LNG is only the latest in a long string of big ideas that have gone aground on small town rocks. Against this backdrop, it shouldn’t be surprising that recent proposals for consolidating expensive government services have so few vocal supporters.
Among islanders, the consolidation issue has recently come into sharp focus over the school board decision in Cumberland to “consolidate” Chebeague Island’s 4th and 5th graders into the district’s elementary school on the mainland from their current two-room schoolhouse on island. The proposal would have perhaps saved the town $48,000, a figure the islanders dispute, but after over 100 islanders showed up a school board meeting to protest the decision, it was withdrawn for the upcoming school year. School board members spoke ominously, however, of revisiting the proposal next year in the interests of determining whether Chebeague Island’s small school is giving its students the best education they can get. Fair enough.
When we look around at island schools — there are 14 of them between Peaks Island off Portland and Islesford off Mount Desert — we find all kinds of different configurations. Three islands, Vinalhaven, North Haven and Islesboro, have full K-12 schools. The four Casco Bay island schools on Cliff, Chebeague, Long and Peaks are K-5 schools with middle and high school students ferried to the mainland. Similarly, students from Swan’s Island and Islesford attend Mount Desert High School on the mainland after 8th grade. Isle au Haut has a one-room school, after which students must board ashore, as do students from Frenchboro and Monhegan’s one-room schools after 8th grade. Matinicus currently has one student enrolled in the smallest school in the state.
No one would suggest that there is the same array of technical and specialized services in island schools as there are in larger mainland schools. But within island school programs are an impressive array of activities that connect deeply with the heart of community life. For instance, Bowdoin students are currently working with kids on Long and Chebeague Islands to build community web sites that essentially describe these communities to the outside world from an island perspective. North Haven came up with a fabulously rich educational experience organized by a community member after a rare white-beaked dolphin washed ashore and students wanted to try to reassemble it. A vocational boatbuilding program at the Vinalhaven school connects students with the island’s long tradition of boat craftsmanship. Frenchboro students are raising lobster larvae in the classroom that connects invertebrate biology with the island’s major occupation. And this summer, Matinicus will be offering a summer program teaching kids how to build the historic Matinicus skiff. Many of these activities are leveraged by the work of Island Fellows or grants from the Island Community Fund, but they all have strong community buy-in and participation.
These community-based school projects are a real strength of island education. They reinforce a unique sense of place that is ultimately a strength of island life — even if island teenagers grow weary of its limits. Community members become teachers and vice versa; learning becomes a lifelong occupation; school is less a place you go to be locked up than a place the community can permeate to evaluate its prospects for the future. Because island schools are so important to the future of island life, many more people on islands than just parents have a stake in their future.
Consolidated schools offer foreign language programs at an early age, excellent music and art programs and often very good teachers with loads of experience that can be difficult for island schools to match. But when I read about nationwide efforts to improve performance by encouraging schools to offer smaller classroom sizes, place-based education programs and multi-age classrooms where the older kids help teach the younger ones, I think island schools are in the vanguard of educational reform.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.