How serious is MDI's latest effort at school reorganization? Rob Liebow will find out
Other news: COA a surprising supporter of cruise ship industry stances
NORTHEAST HARBOR, Sept. 10, 2022 - The Mount Desert Elementary School here has a class with only nine students, according to its principal.
That number is unsustainable. Any seasoned secondary educator will tell you that peer interaction is an important element of a balanced education.
The situation at MDES and elsewhere is the result of a persistent decline in enrollment in MDI schools the last two decades, one wrought by multiple factors - out-of-reach housing cost for families with school age children being the biggest culprit.
But there is another pernicious cause - the provincial reflexes by MDI towns to prioritize “local control” over the education of its children.
Tremont is the poster child for this behavior, as it has on multiple occasions defeated attempts to share resources with Southwest Harbor which has a school 2.9 miles from the Tremont Consolidated School, a 10-minute drive.
The third grade class at Pemetic School in SWH has six students, according to school officials. The same class in Tremont has 11. The numbers scream for consolidation.
But that would mean busing students from one town to another. And that would mean trimming teaching staff which is anathema to teacher unions.
So we beat on, despite calls by a generation of school superintendents for an end to this madness - a school system with nine school boards, nine budgets hewing to their local conceits so they may claim some illusion of independence. (Tremont clings to its schools but doesn’t have a police department).
There are boards for the high school and K-8 in Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Tremont, Cranberry Islands, Swan Island, Frenchboro and Trenton in the system known as MDI Regional School System, which has an uber board consisting of all the above.
When these members meet in their uber meetings, they spend the first few minutes introducing themselves, including the superintendent. In other words they are strangers unto each other. Former superintendent Marc Gousse told me there were weeks when he and his staff did nothing but prepare for and attend school board meetings.
Now enters Rob Liebow from stage left into this fray.
Liebow was the MDI superintendent from 2008 to 2012. He was recently hired by the MDI school system as a consultant to search for the best way to organize governance of schools. Is his engagement an indication that the school boards are finally serious about organizational change?
The QSJ published in lengthy interview with Liebow on April 24, 2021 in which he characterized the current organization as “crazy.” Liebow was surprisingly candid.
“That's not the reason I left, but it would have killed anybody. It's six nights a week.
“Just in the high school, you have the high school board, you have the board of trustees … you have the overall AOS board and then you have a Trenton school board and you have a Southwest Harbor, a Mount Desert, a Bar Harbor, a Tremont, a Swans a Frenchboro, a Cranberry. So that's 11, 12, every two weeks, all year round, all re-inventing the same issues over and over and over again. And they're all separate employers, which to me is crazy.
In a streamlined system, Liebow said, “If you had like a rogue teacher that was causing unrest, you could reassign him … ‘You're going to fifth grade in Bar Harbor, dude. You're not going to destroy this place. I'm reassigning you.’
“And they could transfer easy. They wouldn't have to go to the bottom of the hiring.”
As opposed to the current system. “They're all separate units. So if you were working in Southwest, it would not be in your best interest to go to Mount Desert because you'd be at the bottom of the totem pole. And therefore if times got tough and they had to cut somebody or the enrollment dropped, you'd be the first person cut. So we'd be stupid to do that.
“Southwest Harbor would have its own board, but they'd be the same people who were on the big board, they would just sort of splinter off to have one meeting a month or whatever when necessary. And the principal would advertise for a staff member interview and hire. And that little local board would say, yes, we approve. And then hand it up to the bigger board to rubber stamp it.
“But the person would be a central unit employee with central insurance and the same pecking order that everybody else has. So that it would be much smoother, but you still have some local control. You decide locally who your principal is.
“When it comes to firing the person ... I'm not sure they've talked about the way out the door. The way in the door is one thing, the way out the door is one question they'd have to wrestle with, but they could do that the same way the local group could say, hey, we don't want this principal anymore. And maybe they get transferred by the big superintendent, transfers them to a place where there are a better fit. Well right now you can't do that.”
On Payroll:
“One huge payroll. Yep. Yep. Because you have one contract. They're all employees of that bigger unit. Just the hiring of them was local, but their payroll is just one big operation. So that central office doesn't need three and four different people handling different payrolls. And there may now even be different days of the week. And it's just crazy.”
Liebow wasn’t done. On the subject of sharing teachers, he said:
“If you're a Spanish teacher in Mount Desert, you might be an 0.8. And if you're a 0.8 and you're only four days a week, well then you could be lent to the Island who then fills out the person's full employment status. But that's really messy. I'd rather have it be that you're a central employee and you get on the MailBoat two days a week and you go out to Islesford and teach Spanish and we’ll shift the schedule around at Mount Desert.
“So your Spanish classes here are at the different time, and you're just going to two different schools, not two different employer locations.
“You could even do that with a principal. There's no reason why Islesford needs to have a principal, or why Swans needs a principal. They could share … the principal of Tremont could do Swans, even though right now, I think they've got a pretty good setup because they have a teaching principal. So that works pretty good. But a Frenchboro a one day a week principal is crazy.
“And with all this sort of remote stuff that's going on, they could do some Spanish classes out to Frenchboro. They really mastered that. I mean, we have in Massachusetts, so there's a whole new world of maybe sharing advanced kind of courses. If you have some kids on the Island that are, really accelerated in math, maybe they zoom into that classroom at Mount Desert where there's the algebra 2 class for eighth graders or whatever. So rather than have to get on a boat, come across and wait for the next boat, they just zoom into it. Like now that's what we do down in Massachusetts. We have some kids that don't come in because of COVID. So they zoom into the classroom live stream and the teacher has some live kids there and has a bunch of zoom kids on a screen. And there's one big class and it works just as slick as can be. “
During the interview 18 months ago, Liebow allowed how he, like Marc Gousse, will also retire in 2022 when he qualifies for Massachusetts’s 10-year pension.
Which led QSJ to recall in 2012, before Gousse started, that MDI hired back Howard Colter as an interim superintendent. Colter was MDI superintendent from 1992 to 2004 and left for a job in New Hampshire.
But some sober facts are forcing a new reckoning: The district continues to see a collapse of enrollment, with unaffordable housing for school-age parents who are moving off island.
That is accompanied by departing teachers who also can no longer afford to live here.
In 1999, Tremont School had 208 students. At the end of 2021, according to school records, it had 109. Is it in the best interest of taxpayers and students to continue the current model?
All four towns on MDI have the privilege of being subsidized by summer people who pay the highest taxes but do not use the schools. Mount Desert is the extreme example of that. But even Southwest Harbor and Tremont are beginning to show a significant share from rich summer folks. Bar Harbor has the largest segment of nonprofits which do not contribute to the tax base, but Jackson Labs and The College of the Atlantic have plenty of employees who send their kids to local schools.
That financial cushion has only exacerbated the problem, making school boards less resistant to change.
But are the Jets and the Sharks willing to put away their knifes and zoot guns and end their internecine skirmishes in the interest of the kids? Rob Liebow may be MDI’s final chance for salvation.
It took 20 years but one of the biggest achievements on MDI was the creation of the regional high school in 1968. From the view of a taxpayer, it was a great deal. From the view of parents, their teenagers were able to get a world-class education. Bragging rights as a competitive school athletically and awards for its performing arts were just collateral benefits.
Town boards, COA use familiar tactics to lobby against cruise ship cap
BAR HARBOR - Charlie Sidman has seen this movie before - the town’s entire officialdom and some surprising institutions campaigning against his citizens initiative to cap cruise ships. But he is unfazed.
“It’s actually encouraging that we're getting that amount of respect,” he said of the recent actions by the Town Council, Planning Board and the Warrant Committee to squash his latest initiative to take the town back from the cruise ship industry.
The tactics were nothing new, like the political intubations in June 2019 when Sidman used a similar amendment to the Land Use Ordinance to block cruise ships with more than 500 passengers from being allowed to tie up to town piers. That citizens initiative was approved overwhelmingly by a vote of 493 to 384.
There was one surprising new wrinkle this week though - the disclosure of the role being played by the College of the Atlantic.
Sidman yesterday called out previously undisclosed efforts by Millard Dority, who is now the chairman of the Planning Board, to use his COA email privilege to urge the COA community to reject the initiative in June 2019, days before the referendum.
Dority retired recently as COA’s director of campus planning, buildings and public safety. COA has an outsized role on the current planning board. Three of the seven members have ties to the college - one who is an employee and another who is a recent graduate, in addition to Dority.
Sidman, who calls himself a friend and supporter of COA for 40 years, wrote an email to COA President Darron Collins on June 10, 2019 expressing shock that COA would side with the cruise ship industry and campaign against his initiative.
“I write this morning to protest, in the strongest possible terms, this weekend’s official email (to faculty, staff and students, using internal email channels) from one of your senior administrators to the entire COA community, urging a NO vote on one of the pending Citizen’s Initiatives (#5, concerning cruise ship berthing and pier lengths in Bar Harbor) on tomorrow's (6/11) Bar Harbor town balloting.
“In brief, this email was totally inappropriate and unbecoming of COA’s fine character and reputation in our community and beyond, and should be immediately repudiated and rectified for the following four reasons:
“The College has routinely and wisely refrained from both the actuality and even the appearance of taking positions on political issues, so as not to endanger its non-profit, tax-exempt status. The email at issue blatantly violates this position and practice, incurring the aforesaid risk.
“This email clearly aligns COA with the wealthy, privileged and powerful who reject any constraint whatsoever on their freedom of action (they feel they should be able to do whatever they want, when they want, regardless of others’ interests). The Citizens’ Initiative concerns a matter of deep social and environmental significance, that should in fact have COA’s support rather than covert opposition.
“This last minute directive and plea from a senior leader (Dority) flies in the face of COA’s admirable tradition of open community discussion and consensus decision-making. You are better than this.
“In summary, I hope and trust that COA’s students, faculty and staff are wise enough to reject a slanted and inappropriate political urging and make up their own minds on how to vote. Nevertheless, an open recognition and remediation of this unfortunate communication, that violates so much of COA’s true self interest and what it stands for, would be appropriate and expected.”
Collins replied in an email:
“As Campus Planning and Building Committee chairman, Millard was concerned about Initiative #5 because, if approved, our pier would become non-conforming. Even with grandfathering, changes to our structure, like adding a float to serve student and faculty research in Frenchman Bay, would exacerbate the non-conforming status and therefore be disallowed.
I personally (and the college, institutionally) will continue to work with the Town Council to ensure no berthing pier is ever built to our north (or south, east, west., for that matter). The Council is currently developing language to eliminate the possibility of such a berthing pier. I will continue to be vocal about the issue because such a pier would have a negative impact on our ability to operate effectively. For the same reason, we also have standing on Initiative #5.
“I have spoken to Millard about this--he understands your concern. I think we've gotten things all squared away.”
Sidman rejected Collins’s position:
“The email in question adopts and reiterates the Town Council and Town Manager’s repeated, inaccurate and distorted representations of fact. Specifically, non-conforming structures can continue to be used, repaired, modified, etc.; per the LUO, they just cannot be changed in a way that exacerbates their non-conformity. Second, the administrator (Dority) writes that the amendment "is poorly developed, not well thought through…”; in fact, it was prepared through extensive community discussions, and the involvement and supervision of two (one primary, one cross-checking) local law firms with substantial local government expertise.”
Dority could not reached for comment. At this week’s Planning Board meeting, he led the discussion questioning the use of the LUO in Sidman’s current initiative to disallow the disembarkation of more than 1,000 persons a day off cruise ships in Bar Harbor. The cap now is 5,500.
The board voted 6-0 opposing the initiative. Recent COA grad Calistra Martinez, the new member, abstained.
Board members said the LUO is not the right mechanism for this cap. In fact citizens used it to bar the large cruise ships’ berthing and to place a cap on short-term vacation rentals last November.
Sidman said, “A whole handful of lawyers said the LUO amendment is clearly legal. This objection is just another flimsy excuse against something that they just don't want to happen.
“This is instituting a process for regulating land use activity, just like the planning board's five cases that they adjudicated that night which LUO establishes the process and then the process is followed.
“It's a total charade,” said Sidman of the campaign by the boards and Town Council.
Beech Hill Farm to host fundraiser with live music
SOMESVILLE - The Beech Hill Farmstand has been one of my favorite go-to markets for fresh organic produce but it’s not cheap.
Share the Harvest is the only farm-based food access program on Mount Desert Island and works in conjunction with existing programs to complement their efforts to ensure that fresh, local and organic produce be more accessible to low income residents.
https://www.coa.edu › share-the-harvest › sth-application
Initial fundraising for the program began in the summer of 2007, and in 2008 a $1000 start-up grant from Healthy Acadia and donations from Beech Hill Farm’s farm stand customers facilitated the program’s launch. In the summer of 2008, $50 farm stand vouchers were distributed to 20 families on the island.
The pilot project was so popular that a lottery was necessary to allocate these limited vouchers. Unfortunately, customer donations were insufficient to fund the program’s continuation in 2009. In the winter of 2009, students working in the Launching a New Venture course at College of the Atlantic examined the Share the Harvest business model and came up with a comprehensive plan for its financial sustainability.
In the spring of 2010, two students from that group brought the program into the sustainable business incubator (The Hatchery) and continued to work with on the program, implementing many of the suggestions from the term before and writing an operations manual for the program.
The program has now eliminated the lottery system due to an increase in funds. The program is able to provide support to more than 70 families and individuals on the island.
The Soul Benders (featuring local musicians from Brooksville and MDI's own Katherine Perkins, Danny Fisher Lochhead and Ryan Blotnick) are coming to Beech Hill Farm on Tuesday, Sept. 13 at 6 pm for a concert to benefit Share the Harvest.
Doors open at 5pm for a student art and bake sale. Tickets will be sold on a sliding scale from $5 - $50 ( pay more if you can).
TRIBUTE: Peter A. Austin
1938 - 2022
BAR HARBOR - Heaven gained a great one on September 2, 2022, when our father, Peter A. Austin, 84, died suddenly, with loving family at his side.
The loss of his own father at a very young age was formative in shaping him to become the strong, determined, and loving son, brother, soldier, husband, father and friend that he became. Our father joined the Navy in 1955 and was stationed in Winter Harbor, Maine. He was very proud of his service. On a day off from the base, he and some buddies took a trip into Bar Harbor, where he met and quickly fell in love with our mother Betty. They married in 1959 in Bar Harbor. After he was honorably discharged from the Navy, they relocated to New York City where they started their family.
Dad had many jobs in his life, but landed in the construction field, working his way up from bricklayer to vice president of a contracting company in NYC. While our father had a successful career in construction, he was always home on weekends to spend time with his family. He loved going to our many sports events and was always on the sidelines cheering us on or coaching our teams. Family always came first.
Bar Harbor always held a special place in our father’s heart, where he would take our family every summer to spend time with our mom’s parents and taking the neighborhood kids on mystery rides around MDI.
Dad and Mom finally decided to move to Bar Harbor in 1983, but he continued to commute into NYC every week until he retired in 1990.
After spending a few years in Florida, they made their way back home to Maine, to the island they loved so much. One of Dad’s favorite things to do was take a drive around “The Loop” in Acadia National Park and to sit on the rocks, watching the ocean.
Our father joined his beloved wife Betty Austin, his parents, John Austin and Agnes Austin Leonard, his brothers Father John Austin and Paul Austin, his brother in-law Clifford Mott, and his daughter in-law Diane Austin, in Heaven. He leaves behind his son, John Austin, his wife Lisa with their children Anna, and Jenny, her husband Chris Varnell, their two sons CJ and Colton, his son Peter Austin and sons, Ryan, Michael, Peter, his fiancé Lilly, and daughter, Chloe, his son, Bill Austin, his son, Tim Austin and wife, Dorothy, their children, Brittany and Tim, his daughter, Liz Shaffer her husband, Dan and their children, Brian, his son Leighton, and Megan her husband, David Wernert and their two children Theo and Elizabeth, his daughter, Patty Galeaz and husband, Kerry , their boys, Alexander and Zachary and his two sisters, Ann Mott and Jean Austin along with many nieces and nephews.
It was important to our father to be loving, kind, fun, generous, and loyal to others in his life. He had a wicked sense of humor that often went unrecognized. We will miss this XL<3. We take great comfort in knowing our parents are together eternally.
Friends are invited to call from 5-7pm, Fri. Sept. 9, 2022, at Jordan-Fernald, 1139 Main St., Mt. Desert. A Mass of Christian burial will be prayed 10am, Sat. Sept. 10 at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, 56 Mt. Desert St., Bar Harbor with Father Emile Dube as celebrant. Interment will be at Ledgelawn Cemetery, Bar Harbor.
Those who desire, may make contributions in Dad’s (Peter Austin’s), memory to The Wounded Warrior Project, P.O. Box 758516, Topeka, KS 66675-8516 or at https://support.woundedwarriorproject.org/
Condolences may be expressed at www.jordanfernald.com
Christopher S. Maller Jr.
September 7, 2022
BAR HARBOR - Christopher S. Maller Jr. (“Chris”) passed away unexpectedly while traveling at the age of 37.
Chris was born on Mount Desert Island at MDI Hospital.
Chris graduated from schools that could not satisfy his restless curiosity and wanderlust and worked 9-to-5s that suited him even less. What his resume lacked in gravitas, his passport made up for. It was an unapologetic testament to a life lived well and fully, without fear or hesitation.
While most of us say “someday” when it comes to traveling to an exotic location or ticking an item off our bucket list, Chris never let a day pass unfulfilled. He ran with the bulls in Pamplona. He drove ATVs in the desert in Morocco. He danced in the streets of Mexico City in celebration of Dia de los Muertos. He biked Mount Hood. He free-climbed the Flatiron in Boulder. He paraglided over the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
Chris’ favorite pose in travel photos was facing the camera, big grin on his face, his arms thrown wide open. Reveling in the chaos. And inviting everyone to join him.
That is Chris’ legacy: Buy the ticket. Take the ride. Embrace the chaos.
Chris is survived by his beloved bull terrier Nova (a/k/a Super Nova); father Dr. Christopher S. Maller, Sr. and his partner, Sandra S. Henderson; his mother, Isabelle Birdsall Schweitzer and her
husband Dr. Peter Schweitzer; his big sister Meredith M. Maller, her husband Sam Cocks, and their son—Chris’ nephew—Charlie Curran Cocks; Chris’ little sister Emily Schweitzer and her partner Blake Hagberg; his aunt Marie Birdsall Chaffee and husband Tom Chaffee; his uncle Paul Gorky and aunt Donna Gorky; and cousins Tyler Gorky and Kendyl Gorky. Chris was predeceased by his cousin Brett Gorky and grandparents Natalie and Gregg Birdsall.
Chris was the consummate wanderer, but his true north was Mount Desert Island, where his ashes will be scattered in the waters so dear to him:
“We all end in the ocean
We all start in the streams
We’re all carried along
By the river of dreams.”
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that remembrances be made in the form of contributions to the Mile High Bull Terrier Club or Maine Coast Heritage Trust.
When I read serious sustained reporting, I wonder that such journalists stay sane. Readers can dip in and out. Sometimes you want to run your brain under water.
ThankYou.
I served on the reorganization committee and in 2021 we were on track to present consolidation to the full board in less than a year. Then the chair and vice chair of the committee resigned. I was asked to take it on, but as I was at the end of my term and was not running again, I declined. AFAIK, the entire AOS school board wants consolidation. They all know firsthand how convoluted and broken a system it is. The key will be to teach all the voters this as well. In the end, I believe that it will not be the savings, nor the easier administration that leads to consolidation. It will be the lack of teachers and ed techs. - Tom Reeve