The Boothbay Register will be running a series of columns, under the heading Eye on Education, during the current school year focusing on education issues in the region. Here, Bruce MacDonald, a member of the Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor Community School District School Committee, offers the first column.

The recent findings of the Honeywell audit on the Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor CSD schools prompts some serious thinking about the future of public education on the peninsula. The findings indicated a total of $10 million of infrastructure needs at the two schools. The natural question is, how did we get to this point, and what should we do about it.

First, we got to this point because of the operation of the special charter under which the CSD has operated since its inception in 1953. Under this charter, responsibility for the schools is divided between two committees; the School Trustees, who are in charge of the buildings and grounds, and the School Committee, who are in charge of the teaching and learning. This split personality, if you will, has left room for gaps in the coverage of the entire range of needs. This needs to change. More about that in a moment.

We have 450 projected students for this new school year. What about the future? The average number of actual births per year over the last six years in Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor is 33, and is quite consistent from year to year.

Add in the small number that come into the CSD from Southport (less than two births a year) and Edgecomb (six births a year) from grade seven and up. If these numbers stay steady for the next decade or so, with considerations for people moving in and moving out, we can foresee a CSD of perhaps the same number of students, a total of 450 or so, pre-K through 12, for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the two existing CSD school buildings were built to house a total of around 850 to 900 students.

What to do?

This moment opens up the opportunity for some new thinking about public education here. Should we spend the 10 million dollars on the entire list of needs for two buildings we now have and keep on keeping on, as they say, or should we prioritize the spending on only what is absolutely needed for health, safety, and effective learning and look at other options?

What other options might there be? Your answer to this question probably hinges on your vision for the future of our communities.

The options seem to be:

1. Carry on as we are, investing in the infrastructure of both buildings;

2. Invest in the elementary but close the high school;

3. Invest in the elementary and create a magnet high school; or,

4. Close both schools and send our kids to school off the peninsula.

First, I consider options 2 and 4 the idea of closing either of our schools a non-starter. I like the third option above. Here’s why; there is a great deal of interest these days in economic development on the peninsula. Creating a new model for the high school, a so-called magnet school, could support, in fact could spur the very birth of that development. I imagine a high school whose brand might be something like “The Boothbay Region High School of Marine Science, Arts, and Humanities.” To spur true development here, this development would have to go hand in hand with the development of affordable housing, and the growth of well-paying, year round jobs.

Meanwhile, I believe it is far past time to discard our outmoded two-committee form of school governance. We are the only school unit in the state to be governed this way, due to the 1954 Private and Special Law that created the CSD in the first place. Voters on both Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor would need to petition the state to remove this law. We need a community wide discussion and vote on this topic. Perhaps in the coming year?

The seeds of these ideas have already been sown. Really growing this garden would take a lot of future investment and hard work. I hope we could soon have a unified, two-community debate on how to proceed with any of these future pathways.

Let’s get talking.