School year nears completion

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — With the 2013-14 academic year almost finished, the RSU 68 school board had one final meeting on June 17. The session was the last for Superintendent Alan Smith who will be starting as the head of the school district in the Bridgton/Naples area on July 1.

    “As an administrative team we have been very fortunate to work with Alan,” SeDoMoCha School Principal Julie Kimball said. “We are definitely in a wonderful place and that’s a true testament to him,” she said. Kimball added that Smith has taught her a lot, and she and the other administrators presented Smith with a scrapbook made by the entire school.
    “We appreciate Mr. Smith and his service over the last five years,” Board Chair Rick Johnston said. Johnston said he and the board are sorry to see Smith go but said the superintendent leaves RSU 68 in a good position.
    Smith said he would be meeting with incoming Superintendent Robert Lucy during the ensuing week to help his successor get oriented. “I just want to thank the board for all your support, it’s been a fun five years — it really has,” Smith said.
    He also thanked the administrators and staff. “I really think we have made tremendous academic growth as well as facility growth,” Smith said.
    In other business, Technology Coordinator David Bridges gave his report and said, “We had two opportunities for kids to go on field trips, with multimedia related to both.”
    Bridges said the first field trip was to Husson University in Bangor with a theme of “be a producer, not a consumer” as students could take part in a number of workshops in which they created various media. He said this trip was sponsored in part by the SeDoMoCha School Organization (SSO), and the SSO did likewise with an excursion to a Maine Learning Technology Initiative conference at the University of Maine.
    In addition to learning about technology, Bridges said the field trips gave students a chance to be on a college campus and think about post-secondary education.
    Over the summer work will be done around the SeDoMoCha building to help update the capabilities of some classrooms, Bridges said. He said the technology upgrades will include the first phase of the surveillance system.
    “I can’t tell you how amazing it is to go to graduation at Foxcroft Academy and see student successes across the board, not just our special education students,” Special Services Director Sue Watson said.
    Watson said a special moment came when a student stood out of her wheelchair during the June 8 graduation and was met by a standing ovation. “Those kind of things are why we do what we do day in and day out,” she said.
    All of the special education students who gradated this year had an individual plan for their academic success, Watson said. “That is the kind of education you guys are backing when you send our kids up there,” she said.