ROBBINSTON, Maine — With less than a week before some classes start and tensions still high over the vote last week to close the Robbinston Grade School, parents are scrambling to choose where to send their children.
In a referendum question on Aug. 19, residents voted 149-124 to close the kindergarten through eighth-grade school, displacing about 40 students. A petition signed by at least 28 people triggered the referendum, which sought to overturn the Independent School Department board’s 2-1 decision on July 1 to close the school to save money in the community of under 600 residents.
Independent School Department officials have arranged for the affected students to attend and be bused to Calais Elementary School, where classes begin Sept. 3. Parents can choose to send their children elsewhere, such as elementary or middle schools in Perry or Charlotte, but the local school department only will provide transportation to Calais, at least for now. The older students from Robbinston already go to high school in Calais.
Robbinston parent Jamie Morrell, whose son Lucas will enter third grade, said she was “extremely” overwhelmed by the vote to close the school.
“It’s so hard,” she said, referring to how little time was given to transition. “This is way too much, not only on the students but parents as well.”
After looking at several elementary schools in the area, she chose Monday to enroll Lucas at Perry Elementary School, where classes begin Aug. 31.
Morrell said her son was “angry” about the Robbinston school being closed.
“All he kept saying is, ‘I can’t believe they’d close my school. Why are they closing my school?’”
Morrell believes the school department shouldn’t be able to close the school with so little notice.
“I think everybody’s feeling stressed out because it’s such a push,” she said. “There’s not enough time to decide.”
“The short notice is probably the biggest problem with Sam,” said Lisa Brooks, whose son, Samuel, 9, has attention deficit disorder and pervasive development disorder. “He has a real hard time in school, and transferring him will be rough.”
Samuel’s brother, Wesley, 10, also attended the Robbinston school. Brooks is less worried about transferring him — he adjusts well and his grades are good — but she is still overwhelmed by the decision of where to send them, she said.
As of Monday afternoon, she was still unsure. She visited schools in Calais and Charlotte and was planning to visit Perry on Tuesday, she said.
She had ruled out Calais because the classes there are bigger, meaning each student gets less of the teacher’s time, she said.
“[Samuel] really needs a one on one because he can’t do the work on his own,” she said.
“I can’t tell you how I’ve had sleepless nights worrying about these kids,” Karin Lingley, who served as teacher and principal at Robbinston Grade School last year, said. She was among three teachers and six staffers to lose their jobs with the closure. “Are [the students] going to fall through the cracks? Are they going to get what they need?”
“It’s a very important part of our community to take care of our children,” Yvonne Morrell, Jamie Morrell’s mother-in-law and a former ed tech at the Robbinston school, said. “Sending our children to six or seven different schools is not taking care of our kids.”
She also said the closure wasn’t fair because at the end of last year, teachers and staff waved goodbye to students and said, “see you next year.” Everyone fully expected the students to return to their school.
“They had no idea they’d be spending their last two weeks of summer vacation looking at schools,” she said.
It’s also not fair to students and teachers in other schools, including Calais, to add to the classroom rosters at the last minute, Yvonne Morrell said.
Parent Abbie Rohde said her daughter, Meadow, 7, who is enrolled at Charlotte Elementary School, has cried over the situation with the Robbinston school. Meadow wants to know things like where she will stand in line and how the new school will celebrate birthdays.
“She’s nervous. She never thought she was going to have to change schools,” Rohde said.
Rohde said officials at the elementary schools in Charlotte and Perry told her they had lots of room to take in new students. However, that is not what Robbinston parents were told by their own school officials, she said, bringing up the issue at the Independent School Department board meeting Monday evening.
School board chairman Joseph Footer admitted he said at previous public meetings that Perry Elementary School was filled and could not accept Robbinston students. He said he obtained this information from a member of the Perry school board.
Footer said he was tired of hearing the concerns about the school department selecting Calais as the default choice for Robbinston students and about his misstatement about Perry Elementary.
“We just lost our school, Joe,” countered audience member James Morrell, who is not related to either Jamie or Yvonne Morrell. “Our children are crying, ‘Papa, why is the school closing?’”
Calling it a delicate subject, James Morrell said parents will continue to express their emotions about the loss of their local school for a while and officials need to deal with it.
“We love our children,” he said. “We don’t care to send them somewhere else.”
“I really feel like Calais has been given a bad name in this,” said Sue Carter, principal of Calais Elementary School, who attended Monday’s board meeting in Robbinston. “I think that everyone’s so sensitive that everything that happens is seen as a negative.”
“It’s not about hating Calais. It’s about not wanting to become a suburb of Calais,” Rohde said later outside the meeting.
“I have a child that absolutely loved this school too,” school board member Julie Murray said during the meeting.
However, she said she believes Calais ultimately will provide a better education because of single-grade classrooms and other amenities, such as a gifted and talented program and full-time art and music programs.
Rohde and other parents also said they were concerned about long bus rides to and from Calais.
Interim Superintendent Ray Freve confirmed that students in kindergarten through 12th grade would be on the same bus, and the ride would last a little more than an hour.
When audience members expressed concern, he said, “Try it and see what happens and if there’s a problem, call.”
He said the run can be altered. Also, if enough students choose to attend classes in Perry or Charlotte, the department may be able to work out a plan to provide transportation to one of those schools, he said.