Peering through the windows into the Lubec High School, everything appears normal. The classrooms are tidy, with desks lined up in perfect rows. Teaching texts are stacked on shelves. The school seems poised for the students to return in the fall.
But in June, Lubec residents voted 269 to 230 to shutter the high school.
The vote came after years of fierce debate over the school’s fate, as declining enrollment and a shrinking tax base made it difficult to keep the doors open. At times, that debate has turned ugly, with both sides accusing the other of deliberate misinformation.
A plaque outside the school still welcomes visitors to the “home of the Hornets.” But in recent years, it has been impossible to field many of the high school athletic teams. In 2010, the school graduated just 11 students.
It wasn’t always that way. Dan Fitzsimmons, a Lubec fisherman, was part of his school’s soccer team when it was a state powerhouse. According to Fitzsimmons, his team outscored opponents by nearly 100 goals in one season.
“We just blew everyone out,” he said.
But since his school days, Lubec’s manufacturing base has vanished. In the past few decades, the town lost sardine factories, a cat food factory and a budding aquaculture business. Young families have migrated elsewhere to look for work. Still, Fitzsimmons’ daughter hoped to attend the same school as her father. Instead, she’ll go to school in Machias.
The vote to close the school felt “just like someone dying,” he said.
Most Lubec teens will choose to attend public or private school in Machias. As required by law, the town will pay tuition to any high school in the state, public or private. There has been some discussion of a plan to ferry students to Eastport High School, but city and school officials think that outcome unlikely because of dangerous currents in Cobscook Bay.
Many area teens already chose to commute to Washington Academy in Machias before discussion of the Lubec High School’s fate even came up for discussion. Students in communities surrounding Lubec have had the choice to attend Washington Academy as their public option, and the private school also has offered some scholarships to Lubec teens. Lubec Head Selectman Bill Daye estimated that only two out of nine incoming high-school age students in the area have indicated they wanted to go to Lubec High.
School board member Stephanie Page’s daughter wanted to attend high school in Lubec. This made Page’s vote to close the school doubly difficult. She said she voted to close the school as a procedural move to allow the town’s voters to decide the school’s fate. The town only could vote on the school closure if the school board recommended it.
School board meetings have been contentious in recent years. The school board has met resistance from Lubec voters over the school budget. Also, this isn’t the first time that residents debated the high school’s closure. Page wanted the voters to have the power.
“This town has been torn apart for years,” Page said.
The school system has tried to work within a tight budget and it had cut every corner it could, Page said. The high school had no paid foreign language instructor and it limped along with a heating system well past its prime.
But then news came that the state had cut aid to the Lubec school system by some $579,000. The state reformulated Lubec’s local tax burden because of the revaluation of the town’s coastline. That formula only looks at property values and not per capita income.
To make up the lost funds, Lubec residents would have been looking at a tax increase of 25 percent, by some estimates. There was nowhere left to trim the budget, said Page.
“The only place we can make that up is jobs,” she said.
The recalibration of the state formula is partly a result of the influx of new arrivals in Lubec in recent years. Selectman Daye said a town map of year-round residences shows that 50 percent to 60 percent of Lubec homes are used by summer residents.
According to local realtor Debbie Holmes, Lubec was an under-realized market when she first moved to the area.
“I got my real estate license in ’96 and the whole town was for sale,” Holmes said. “And it was pretty inexpensive.”
All that changed about a decade ago, she said. Out-of-state homebuyers discovered Lubec late in 1999 during press coverage of Y2K. Good Morning America and the New York Times rushed to profile Lubec because it was considered the first town in the continental U.S. to feel the sunlight of the new millennium. Buzz over Lubec grew in artistic circles grew with a new summer music program. Artists flocked to the area.
But the demographic of the town fundamentally shifted, Holmes said. Families with young children moved away in search of lost manufacturing jobs. Those moving in were older, and they had no school-age children. Thanks to the Internet, many telecommute to work and are not dependent on building up the local economy.
This graying trend will only be exasperated with the loss of the high school, Holmes said.
“This will be a bedroom community,” she said.
It’s still unclear what savings the town will realize with the move. Staff will be cut, but the school building will remain open for the elementary and middle school. Selectman Daye estimates the town will save between $300,000 to $600,000 annually, but others feel the figure will be much lower when increased transportation costs are factored in.
Residents also debate what effect the school closure will have on students. In a public meeting, one school official told an audience that up to half of the student population will drop out rather than bus to Machias, an estimated 30 minute to 45 minute bus ride, according to the school’s dropout prevention models. Others believe the school closure will mean the school system can now focus more energy on the elementary and middle schools. They hope the high school students will find more opportunities at Washington Academy or the public high school in Machias.
The school board soon will meet to discuss the high school wing’s fate. Selectman Daye says there are many ideas about how to use it. Recently, he was contacted by someone hoping to establish a day program for seniors there.
But no one interviewed believes the high school will reopen anytime in the near future, and Lubec residents now must face a future without it.
Ron Pesha, a retired educator who helped to drum up support for the school, feels disheartened by the decision. But he said that it’s important to remember that those who voted for its closure thought they were doing the best for the town. Still, he felt the closure of the school left a hole in the town that couldn’t be filled.
“I don’t think we can move forward, we just have to live with it,” Pesha said.
Coverage of Washington County is made possible by a grant from the Eaton Foundation.
Craig Idlebrook is a freelance writer based in Ellsworth.