WESTBROOK – Westbrook officials expressed shock Wednesday that a School Committee member has been indicted on charges of hindering the apprehension of a former Westbrook Middle School employee charged with sexual abuse of a minor, a Westbrook student. According to the Cumberland County grand jury indictment list for May, Suzanne Joyce, 51, a longtime public figure in Westbrook, was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution after a three-month investigation by the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office that started in January. The employee, Dereck Gilman, 24, a former Westbrook Middle School special education educational technician who resigned April 1, has been charged with unlawful sexual touching and sexual abuse of a minor following a seven-month investigation from May 2012 to January 2013. (read more at American Journal)
SOUTH PORTLAND — James O. Kaler Elementary School Principal Diane Lang had not expected the school’s “Kalerbration” last week to coincide with the release of Maine Department of Education letter grades for public schools. But as a rejoinder to the state-assessed F the school received based on reading and math test scores and measurements of student progress, the May 2 event showed parents and visitors the results of the project-based learning introduced last year. “We are on the right path,” Lang said. “The score does not represent our school and where we are.” Throughout the school’s two floors on South Kelsey Street, kindergartners through fifth-graders explained creations and projects real and imaginary based in lessons in art, literature, science, math and technology. In third-grade teacher Cory DiDonato’s room, Davis Herrick and his father, Peter Herrick, reviewed the human digestive tract on a life-size paper cutout covered with a vibrantly colored colon, stomach and esophagus. “We have dinner conversations about the colon, and that is fine,” Peter Herrick said. “(The F grade) is preposterous, based on math and reading tests taken once a year. It is blatantly not reflective of this particular school.” Lang said an initial drop in the school’s New England Common Assessment Program scores was expected as the school embraced project-based learning, but the results will show a better school and engaged, energized students. Fifth-graders Aiden Emery and James Thebarge said their studies of ecosystems led to a cleanup around the city’s Greenbelt path. “While we were walking, we noticed there was a lot of pollution,” Thebarge said. (read more at The Forecaster)
BANGOR — A former substitute teacher pleaded guilty Monday at the Penobscot Judicial Center to misdemeanor charges in connection with inappropriate behavior with four students at schools in Bangor and Old Town. Gene Staffiere, 68, of Bangor pleaded guilty to four counts of Class D assault and one count of Class E disorderly conduct. By pleading guilty, Staffiere admitted that on Sept. 24 while he was substituting at Fairmount School in Bangor he rubbed a male student’s back and did the same to three male students on Dec. 12 at the Old Town Middle School. Police investigations were launched after the students told parents and teachers they felt Staffiere had behaved inappropriately with them. Staffiere, who retired to Bangor after a teaching career in upstate New York, was summoned [sic] but not arrested on the charges, according to court documents. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — A committee raising money to light up a new bridge connecting New Hampshire and Maine has reached its initial goal of $150,000. More than 95 individuals and 28 area businesses and organizations combined have pledged or donated the amount toward the goal of $200,000 for the Memorial Bridge. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)
SAD 44 officials Monday said the “F” grade given to Telstar High School by the state last week was foreshadowed by last year’s low standardized test score results. The Maine Department of Education last Wednesday released “report cards” on all Maine public schools. The Andover Elementary School also received an “F,” while the other three SAD 44 schools – Telstar Middle, Crescent Park Elementary and Woodstock Elementary – received a “C.” Standardized test results in reading and math, including the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) in the lower grades and the SAT in high school, were used in grading. A series of points were awarded for various combinations of testing results, with 400 the maximum total points possible for K-8 and 500 the maximum for high schools. K-8 and high schools shared one common measure, but differed on two others. For all schools, proficiency (achievement) levels for the most recent testing were included. For K-8 schools, “growth” – the collective improvement of individual students from the previous year – was also included. Growth was also included separately for students who had scored in the bottom 25 percent for the previous year. (read more at the Bethel Citizen)
RUMFORD — The River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition will be teaming up with local florists and tuxedo rental shops for the third time in a campaign that attempts to highlight the recent, statewide decline in underage drinking. The campaign’s theme is “Wow, Times Have Changed,” according to RVHCC project coordinator Sandy Witas. “We robbed it from the underage drinking prevention group, 21 Reasons from Portland,” Witas explained. “Their company put the whole thing together, and they’re really good about sharing their materials with other groups.” In a RVHCC news release, Witas explained that the campaign highlights a report from the Maine Office of Substance Abuse, which stated that most of today’s youth do not drink. The release also pointed out that in a 2009 statewide parental phone survey conducted by 21 Reasons, it was found that more parents are taking concrete steps to keep their children from drinking than in previous years. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)
BUCKFIELD — Students at Buckfield Junior-Senior High School on Monday morning were reminded about the deadly consequences of texting while driving and, above all, learned that any text message, no matter how important they think it is, “can wait.” At 8 a.m., students, along with the school’s principal, George Reuter, teachers and other staff members, piled into the auditorium to hear an hour-long anti-texting and driving educational presentation, as part of AT&T’s “It Can Wait” public awareness campaign. The goal of the campaign, which began March 2010, is “to save lives and make texting and driving as unacceptable as drinking and driving,” said AT&T regional vice president Owen Smith. In addition to revealing shocking statistics, he showed the students a powerful 10-minute documentary titled “The Last Text.” The video features stories of eight lives that were drastically-altered or even ended because of a few simple words sent via text message – some as simple as “LOL,” “YEAH” and “WHERE U AT.”
NORWAY — Students at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School have, for the past two months, been reaping the benefits of SAD 17′s outdoor classroom site at Roberts Farm Preserve, as the school’s salad bar has begun featuring vegetables planted, nurtured and harvested by their classmates and other Oxford Hills students. The Roberts Farm site, which includes a portable classroom, four greenhouses, a dozen raised beds and more than an acre of fields, along with miles of trails, opened last summer and has rapidly developed into a four-season, multi-purpose interactive classroom. Now, it’s helping bring healthy, local produce directly into the school’s cafeterias. Earlier this year, just as the first crop of leafy greens grown in the site’s greenhouses were ready to harvest, site coordinator and Food Corps volunteer Dan Rennie paid SAD 17 Food Services Director Martha O’Leary a visit and offered a proposition – would her department consider sourcing salad greens from the farm? (read more at Advertiser Democrat)
AUGUSTA, Maine — Three-quarters of the state’s schools received a grade of C or lower under a new ranking system unveiled by the Maine Department of Education on Wednesday. Only 10 high schools, most of them in southern Maine, received an A grade. While there has been widespread resistance to the idea, which some have called a punitive oversimplification of a school’s quality, the LePage administration has billed the grades as a simple and accessible way to reward high-performing schools and help educators and communities rally around the rest. Maine is the 14th state in the nation, along with New York City, to implement a school grading system. Gov. Paul LePage, during a press conference Wednesday in Augusta, said the only reason he asked for the grading system was to improve Maine schools. He has set a goal of improving standardized test scores by 20 percent within “a couple of years.” (read more at Bangor Daily News)
WALES, Maine — A bomb threat cleared Oak Hill High School on Tuesday morning shortly after RSU 4 Superintendent Jim Hodgkin returned from Oak Hill Middle School, fresh from talking to those students about a threat that closed that school Monday. At 10:30 a.m., Hodgkin was awaiting the arrival of a state police bomb-sniffing dog to walk the building and give it the all clear. High school students had been bused to the middle school gym in the meantime. In both cases, the word “bomb” was found written in a girls bathroom, according to Hodgkin. On Monday, it had been found at 1:30 p.m. on a mirror on the second floor at the middle school. On Tuesday, it was found around 9 a.m. written on a wall inside a stall at the high school. “It’s really unfortunate this happens ever, sometimes the timing is even worse,” said Hodgkin. “In light of what happened in Boston last week — yesterday was the one-week anniversary. That’s very unnerving. That anybody would think that it would be funny or cool or anything remotely close to that is very disturbing.” On Monday, school closed early and students were bused to the high school while a bomb-sniffing dog checked the building. It was deemed clear at 4:45 p.m.
WESTBROOK – Westbrook officials expressed shock Wednesday that a School Committee member has been indicted on charges of hindering the apprehension of a former Westbrook Middle School employee charged with sexual abuse of a minor, a Westbrook student. According to the Cumberland County grand jury indictment list for May, Suzanne Joyce, 51, a longtime public figure in Westbrook, was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution after a three-month investigation by the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office that started in January. The employee, Dereck Gilman, 24, a former Westbrook Middle School special education educational technician who resigned April 1, has been charged with unlawful sexual touching and sexual abuse of a minor following a seven-month investigation from May 2012 to January 2013. (read more at American Journal)
