SAD 4 school year off to a good start, administrators say

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    GUILFORD — With new principals at the secondary and elementary schools, School Administrative District 4 directors may have anticipated some glitches at the start of the new school year.
    But the word at last week’s school board meeting was essentially “so far, so good.”

    It was the first full week under the new leadership of Piscataquis Community Secondary School Principal John Keane and PCES Principal Anita Wright.
    Keane, the longtime principal J.A. Leonard Middle School in Old Town, replaced Kevin Harrington who left for a position in Livermore Falls; and Wright, a veteran educator in the Pittsfield-Newport area, succeeded Julie Orton, who retired.
    Wright had the first piece of good news, announcing that the PCES fifth-grade Maine Educational Assessment scores “were three points above the state average. We had 75 percent of our students meeting or exceeding standards, compared to the statewide average of 63 percent.”
    She added that there was an “excellent turnout at fifth-grade band signup … so it looks like we’re going to have a pretty good-sized band this year.”
    Keane said that one of the first things on his agenda was to address senior privileges. He noted that there was already a school board policy on the practice, but he wanted to clarify it with the students. “I explained that under the practice, you can come in late and leave early, but it’s not an ‘open campus’ situation … you just can’t come and go as you please,” Keane said. “I’m not sure they were happy about the idea, but they were willing to give the new principal and the new guidance counselor (Deborah McPhail) some support.”
    Keane also said he was working on creating a senior lounge in the building, which is traditional in many high schools. “Some of them were so excited about the idea that they cleaned out the room that we want to use,” Keane said. The only problem is finding “adult supervision” for the lounge, he said. He’s considering a “duty roster” of teachers who could take turns monitoring the lounge, but Keane said he didn’t want to “overwhelm the staff with non-teaching duties.”
    Board Chair Cinthia Hoak said that she was “really impressed with what I’ve seen so far. We’re off to a good start.”
    One minor setback was noted by Superintendent Ann Kirkpatrick on the Tri-County Technical Center schedule, which she says doesn’t quite match SAD 4’s. “I think they want the Dexter school district to ‘drive’ the (TCTC) calendar,” Kirkpatrick said. “We were one of the first districts that had our calendar set which included two weeks off at Christmas … Dexter did not want to do that, but they were sort of forced in it.”
    TCTC is on the Dexter Regional High School campuses and also educates students from Greenville, SAD 68 (Dover-Foxcroft), SAD 41 (Milo) and RSU 19 (Newport).
    Niki Fortier, chair of the Building and Grounds Committee, outlined all the improvements made on the campus during the summer along with other items on the “to-do” list. These include replacement of the rug in the elementary school band room, sanding and refinishing the high school gym floor “which hasn’t been done in 18 years” and repaving the parking lot. “It would take $150,000 to do it completely, so we’re just going to patch it for now,” Fortier said.