School's Open August 30, 2011. Please Drive Carefully!

Arundel selectmen set town tax rate for 2011-2012 fiscal year

Arundel Board of Selectmen at Monday’s meeting set the tax rate for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

Selectmen approved raising the tax rate from $13.20 to $13.86 per $1,000 valuation with an overlay of approximately $43,100.

as reported by the kennebunkpost.com 

http://blog.kennebunkpost.com/2011/08/25/news-briefs.aspx

Headmaster turns down RSU 21 offer

Thornton Academy Headmaster Carl Stasio declined Regional School Unit 21’s offer to accept Arundel middle school students while it honors the financial obligations of the district’s contract with Thornton Academy.

The contract states that RSU 21, which encompasses Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Arundel, will pay tuition for all Arundel middle school students to attend Thornton Academy Middle School. Last year’s arbitration between Thornton Academy and RSU 21 solidified the contract’s language. The ruling prohibited the district from enrolling additional Arundel middle school students at Middle School of the Kennebunks unless the contract is terminated.

Arundel middle school students have been allowed to attend Middle School of the Kennebunks if their families pay the district approximately $8,000, the cost for tuition set by the Maine Department of Education.

Arundel parents at an Aug. 15 school board meeting asked the board to make the official request on their behalf.

The district wrote to Thornton Academy’s Board of Trustees Aug. 17 and asked them to consider allowing up to 15 Arundel students in each of grades six, seven and eight to attend Middle School of the Kennebunks at no cost to the parents or guardians.

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RSU 21 asks TA to allow Arundel students

By MATT KIERNAN
Staff Writer | Journal Tribune

Published:

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 12:06 PM EDT

KENNEBUNK — Thornton Academy’s headmaster is asking the Regional School Unit 21 school board to respect the contract set forth to allow Arundel students to only attend Thornton Academy Middle School.

The RSU 21 school board sent a letter to the TAMS board of trustees last week asking them to allow 15 Arundel students to attend the Middle School of the Kennebunks – against a contract that states they cannot.

“The contract said it. The arbitrator confirmed it. The community vote maintained it,” wrote Carl Stasio, headmaster of TAMS, in a statement released Monday.

Some parents requested the RSU 21 school board send the letter at their Aug. 15 meeting, reasoning that their children should have the best education available.

“We’re ignoring these families, we’re ignoring these students, we’re choosing to do this, and I think that should be a matter of public record,” said Pam Wuerthner, an Arundel parent, at the meeting.

Wuerthner added that she knows the contract binds the students to TAMS, but that an exception should be made for  those who wish to leave.

Arundel middle school students are currently only allowed to attend TAMS under a contract between the school and RSU 21.

The transfer of 15 students would cost the district $350,000 in tuition fees, according to Stasio.

“If you take 45 kids out of the student population, it would start to not even look like a school,” said Stasio in an interview Monday about a hypothetical situation where more children would leave the school.

According to Stasio, the school’s population is approximately 160 students.

Besides the contract, a judge ruled last year that RSU 21 administrators can’t solicit students to transfer to other schools. RSU 21 Superintendent of Schools Andrew Dolloff said that sending the letter wouldn’t be in violation of the ruling.

Also, a referendum was held in May in which the majority of voters cast ballots against buying out the contract for $1.2 million.

Some RSU 21 school board members questioned if MSK would be able to accommodate a large number of students from Arundel even if TAMS allowed them to transfer.

Dolloff said MSK could take 15 additional Arundel students without requiring an increase in staff.


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School Bus Route information for 2011 - 2012 as provided by RSU 21.net

Find the latest information on your school bus routes for 2011 - 2012 school year as provided by RSU 21.

http://www.infofinderi.com/tfi/address.aspx?cid=MAS704967338300

Excess capacity | Public schools like Millinocket's buoy enrollment by joining the hunt for foreign students' tuition and diversity

By WHIT RICHARDSON

Mainebiz contributing writer

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When Ken Smith took over as superintendent of the Millinocket School Department in July 2010, he inherited a tough challenge: Revenue was falling as enrollment continued to shrink. The high school had fewer than 200 students last year, compared to 700 in the 1970s. The school department budget had a $1.1 million hole that needed to be filled, otherwise Smith would be faced with spending his first year on the job cutting education programs and laying off staff. 

Rather than accept the story line that Millinocket is a dying mill town with no hope of the schools regaining enrollment, Smith decided to change the narrative. While Millinocket wasn’t attracting new students from domestic sources, Smith noticed the rising number of international students who wanted to travel to the United States for an American high school experience. With the support of the local school board, he launched a program to recruit international students for Stearns High School. The decision was novel enough to warrant an article in the New York Times that October. 

“People have to stop complaining and come up with ways to change their revenue sources,” Smith says. “This seems like a natural to me. To bring in international students and learn from them, as well as driving some income.”

Smith traveled to China last October. The trip is beginning to pay off. This fall, six tuition-paying Chinese students will attend Stearns High, adding $144,000 to the school department’s budget. It’s a far cry from the 60 students and $1.4 million boost Smith expected to deliver to the school system, but it’s a start.

Millinocket is a pioneer in what some say is a trend in Maine and across the country. Private schools in Maine, like Lee Academy in Lee and Thornton Academy in Saco, have boarded international students as a revenue generator for a handful of years now, but only recently public schools have begun pursuing the same strategy. “It’s a whole different ball game right now,” says Suzanne Fox, a consultant who has helped several schools in Maine, including Millinocket’s, develop international programs. “Just with public schools entering the fray it’s huge. It’s so huge.” 

So are the variables. Millinocket expected 60 Chinese students based on assurances from a recruiter in China who failed to deliver, according to a report from The Associated Press. The situation wasn’t helped by a Chinese publication that characterized American public schools as mediocre and Stearns, in particular, as “run-of-the-mill.” 

Despite the slow start, there is enough interest in attracting foreign stduents to public schools to prod legislative changes. International students can attend U.S. private high schools for four years, but public high schools for only a year, a federal law that Smith is trying to change. Sen. Susan Collins has agreed to co-sponsor a bill to allow public schools to enroll international students for four years. “There is a level of interest,” Smith says. “People didn’t realize that this law existed, that private schools had the decided advantage.” 

These new students, the majority from wealthy Asian families, boost school revenue and bring diversity to Maine’s schools, but they also bring pockets full of spending money to spread throughout the local business community, where they’ll shop for snacks, clothes or buy lift tickets for a winter weekend at a nearby ski resort. 

 

“You bring in 100 new people to a market area and they’re spending money at stores, buying clothes, Big Gulps at 7-11, there’s going to be an economic impact,” says Wade Merritt, vice president of the Maine International Trade Center, which in April led a trade mission to South Korea that included representatives from Lee Academy and John Bapst in Bangor. “There’s also extended family. They come to visit [the students], hotel nights, rental cars, using airports and taxis. Getting more people here is the short-term win.”

But Fox is more interested in the long-term win that can be realized from the exposure Maine receives from foreign students and their families. 

She cites an encounter she had at a Chinese language roundtable she started in Portland for people like her — she has lived and traveled extensively in China — to practice their language skills. About a year ago, a Chinese man who spoke no English showed up, having heard about the meetings from another Chinese person. As it turned out, this man’s son was attending Gould Academy in Bethel. Looking to stay close to his son, he had decided to purchase a condo in Portland. He is now a regular member of the meetings, happy to speak his native tongue in such a foreign place as Maine.

One condo sale may not make a splash in the southern Maine real estate market, but Fox sees it as anecdotal evidence of the potential long-term economic development implications these international students and their visiting parents could have on Maine. ”The connections that can happen with tourism and the business community…” Fox trails off. “I just think there’s more interesting things that can happen. They do have money and they don’t know what Maine has to offer. So what I’m trying to do is brand Maine in China.”

Education as industry....read more

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD: Maine Voices: British couple who ran Wells restaurant mistreated, but still have an option

After serious abuse from immigration bureaucrats, the Franks can still hope our senators can help.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Last year The Portland Press Herald carried several articles about Dean and Laura Franks, the British couple who owned and operated a restaurant in Wells for 10 years. It was called Laura's Kitchen.

Dean and Laura Franks in their former restaurant, Laura's Kitchen, in Wells.

2009 Press Herald file

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Guignard grew up in Biddeford, graduated from Bowdoin College and is a retired foreign service officer. He now lives in Virgina.

Two years ago, the Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS) at the California Service Center refused to extend their E-2 investor status because the business was deemed by an overzealous adjudicator to be not profitable enough. This finding was a very subjective one, since there are no specific profit margins written in the law to qualify.

The Franks left the country as ordered by CIS and went to Canada. They returned for a short trip thereafter to oversee (unsuccessfully) the selling of their restaurant in Wells and their home in Arundel. Again they left within their allotted time. To better facilitate subsequent travel to the U.S. as tourists, they applied for visitor visas at the U.S. Consulate General in Montreal.

The visas were granted. On a recent visit to the U.S., however, they were denied entry. Why? Because the border inspector believed that they would stay illegally, again a very subjective finding, especially given the fact that the Franks had always left the U.S. before their period of lawful stay expired.

In recent email exchanges with the Franks, I have learned the following:

They were held for four hours at a Vermont port of entry, had their valid visas canceled and their car searched, with some of its contents damaged. Mr. Franks was fingerprinted seven times even though the fingerprints should have been on file from his last entry.

During the four hours they were held, they sat on hard wooden benches. They were escorted to the bathroom and given some "tepid" water "only after we pleaded." Unfortunately, this kind of treatment is meted out with some regularity at ports of entry in the U.S.

Ironically, in several of their emails to me, they reiterated that they know they could have stayed in the U.S. illegally but they "were not brought up that way." The border inspectors thought differently.

Since 1996, the U.S. Border Patrol has been given additional authority to inspect foreign nationals entering the country. And, strange as it may seem, the visa issued in Montreal did not give the Franks a guarantee of being admitted into the U.S. -- about 1 percent of visa holders are denied entry.

The 1996 legislation was aimed at criminals, terrorists and other miscreants who when confronted at the border exercised their rights under our law to gain entry and be "paroled" into the U.S. promising to show up in the future for a hearing. Most simply disappeared.

But this stringent legislation was not aimed at innocent tourists such as the Franks, although they recently bore the brunt of the new legislation. It behooves Customs and Border Patrol to encourage its inspectors to exercise more discretion when inspecting and questioning innocent foreign nationals such as the Franks.

The Franks have only one option now -- to return to England, a country, they note, with high unemployment and dim prospects for two people nearing 50 years of age. "We have to kiss our beautiful home in Maine goodbye and sit back and watch as the bank repossesses it. We worked hard and put every penny we earned back into our home and restaurant and managed to pay off the restaurant mortgage early, so what? We can never run it again or even see it again. If we are really lucky we might sell it, eventually, but likely we won't."

Because they were denied entry in Vermont, they may well be barred from coming back to the U.S. for years. In short, a decision made by a faceless bureaucrat 3,000 miles away in California has ruined their lives. They have exhausted their savings trying to comply with our laws.

What can be done? The Franks should contact Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins again. In 2005, Sen. Snowe contacted our Embassy in New Zealand to assist Scott Downie in entering the U.S. after he had been denied a visa for a previous overstay in the country.

Senate offices have staffs that can communicate with U.S. embassies and speak to a sympathetic consul who will reissue an E-2 visa to the Franks or contact a port of entry in Maine to arrange for them to be admitted as tourists from Canada.

When I was a U.S. consul, I regularly received calls from interested members of Congress whose intervention proved successful. It is the least our senators can do for them.

- Special to the Press Herald

Regional school talks may open doors

Regional school talks may open doors

By Rachel H. Goldman

Staff Writer of the kennebunkPost.com

Regional School Unit 21 and Wells Ogunquit Consolidated School District representatives agree collaboration should be in their future even if a consolidated high school is not.

The two districts met again last Thursday to discuss the possibility of a regional high school for Arundel, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Wells and Ogunquit students.

Ogunquit Select Board Chairman Donato Tramuto initiated conversation about a regional school in March when he mailed letters to selectmen in RSU 21 towns Arundel, Kennebunk and Kennebunkport.

Tramuto proposed a meeting to explore options to “help us achieve an unmatched standard of education,” he wrote.

Municipal and school representatives from the five towns first met May 18 and school board representatives met again July 7 to discuss the possibility.

RSU 21 Superintendent Andrew Dolloff on Thursday presented the group with Harriman Architects’ cost estimates for expanding the current Kennebunk High School into a larger regional school. The firm is working with the district on current Kennebunk High School renovation plans.

Dolloff said the Maine Department of Education would require the regional school of 1,400 students be built on 40 acres of developable land.

He said building a regional school on the current Kennebunk High School site would be feasible because the property is 49 acres.

However, playing fields would have to be located elsewhere if a new regional high school was built on the Kennebunk High School site, he said. Fields at Kennebunk Elementary School or in Wells would be possibilities, he added. 

Dolloff said Harriman Architects agreed building a larger school on the Kennebunk High School site would be feasible, but would require a more expensive construction plan that includes destroying and rebuilding one of the school’s older wings to allow a three-story building.

Dolloff said Harriman Architects estimated the regional school project would cost $60 million. Kennebunk High School renovations are estimated at $35 million to $45 million. Wells-Ogunquit renovation plans are several years behind RSU 21  and the district does not have a cost estimate to renovate Wells High School. 

Dolloff said there are several funding options exist for regional school. He said charging Wells and Ogunquit students tuition in RSU 21 might be the most feasible option.

He said the payback over 20 years for a $60 million project would start at yearly payments of $5.5 million. Payments would decrease each year.

If RSU 21 charged 400 Wells and Ogunquit students tuition of around $8,800 a student, Wells-Ogunquit would pay approximately $3.5 million dollars a year while RSU 21 would foot $2 million a year plus additional staffing costs.

“It’s very complicated as to how cost-sharing would work out,” Dolloff said. “We’d have to model different scenarios to figure out if tuitioning is really the best way or would it be cost-sharing where we have separate governing boards with a cost-sharing formula like the one among our three (RSU 21) towns that take into account student enrollment and property valuation.”

Wells-Ogunquit Superintendent Elaine Tomaszewski agreed the cost aspect of the regional school project would be especially complicated.

“All consolidations complicate when you get to financials,” she said. “And this one would be extremely complicated.”

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Arundel residents seek middle school answer

Arundel residents seek middle school answer

By Rachel H. Goldman

Staff Writer of the Kennebunk Post

Regional School Unit 21 will formalize an offer to Thornton Academy Board of Trustees asking them if the district can accept Arundel middle school students while honoring the financial obligations of the district’s contract with Thornton Academy.  

The contract states that RSU 21 will pay tuition for all Arundel middle school students to attend Thornton Academy Middle School. Last year’s arbitration between Thornton Academy and RSU 21 solidified the contract’s language. The ruling prohibited the district from enrolling additional Arundel middle school students at Middle School of the Kennebunks unless the contract is terminated.

Arundel middle school students have only been allowed to attend Middle School of the Kennebunks if their families pay the district approximately $8,000, the cost for tuition set by the Maine Department of Education.

Arundel, Kennebunk and Kennebunkport residents in May voted to leave the contract in place.

Several Arundel residents in July approached their board of selectmen and asked if it could help find a way for Arundel students to attend Middle School of the Kennebunks.

Arundel selectmen agreed the issue resided between the district and Thornton Academy.

Arundel residents on Monday night approached the school board and asked the RSU 21 board to formally extend the offer to Thornton Academy’s board of trustees.

“I’m fighting for education,” Arundel resident Matt Sylvanus told the school board Monday night. “This one last step needs to be taken. We need this to be formally offered.”

Board members acknowledged the residents’ desire to send children to the public school within their district, but worried whether aggressively pursuing the issue would reignite the heated Thornton Academy Middle School buyout dispute.

“The voters have voted, the arbitrator has decided. I think it’s a shame frankly, but I’m afraid we’re grasping at straws and we’re dragging it along,” said Kennebunk Board Member Tim Hussey.

Kennebunk Board Member Frank Drigotas worried pursuit of the issue could cause a backlash from Thornton Academy supporters and strengthen the push to withdraw from the district.

Kennebunk Board Member Bob Domine urged the district not to be “bullied” by Thornton Academy or the town of Arundel.

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Kennebunks, Arundel, Wells-Ogunquit eye regional high school

The districts, still in the early stage of planning, will meet Thursday.

By Emma Bouthillette ebouthillette@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer 

KENNEBUNK — Officials from Regional School Unit 21 and the Wells-Ogunquit Community School District are expected to meet Thursday to discuss the feasibility of creating a regional high school.

Wells-Ogunquit Superintendent Elaine Tomaszewski said the suggestion has been made because her district realizes its need to renovate or rebuild Wells High School and RSU 21 is investigating renovation options for Kennebunk High.

Selectmen from Wells, Ogunquit, Arundel, Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, as well as representatives from the two districts' school boards, have met to discuss the pros and cons of a regional high school. Thursday's meeting will focus on a proposal to add a third level onto Kennebunk High School to accommodate all of the students, as well as the costs and governing structure, Tomaszewski said.

"We'll look at that Thursday and take recommendations to bring back to each of our respective (school) boards," she said.

With about 800 students at Kennebunk High, many classes are now being held in portable classrooms, said RSU 21 Superintendent Andrew Dolloff. Early estimates show renovations that would eliminate portable classrooms could cost the district $32 million to $46 million.

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