FRENCHVILLE, Maine — Support for students and staff of the blue ribbon winning elementary school that was the heart of the Frenchville community is strong nearly two weeks after fire destroyed the building.
Despite the efforts of several St. John Valley fire departments, Dr. Levesque Elementary School burned to the ground on Sunday, July 25, as a horrified community watched. The fire was likely electrical and started in a wall between the gymnasium and the nurse’s office, the state fire marshal’s office said. The school did not have a sprinkler system.
Plans have been made to house the 130 displaced pre-K through sixth-grade students, 10 full-time teachers and 10 additional staff at Wisdom Middle/High School and St. John Valley Technology Center. Meanwhile, gifts of books, other materials and money have been pouring in so fast to help the school reestablish its classrooms and library that there has been no time to tally the donations.
Educator Angel Deschaine of North Carolina said that she felt called to action the morning of the fire when she saw images of the burning school on social media. Deschaine had grown up in St. David, and has friends and relatives who attended Dr. Levesque and her cousin’s wife is a teacher there.
Drawing inspiration from a similar effort in North Carolina, Deschaine started the Facebook page, Giving Back to Dr. Levesque Teachers.
“I couldn’t imagine watching your classroom burn,” Deschaine said. “A class isn’t just the desks and the notebooks and papers. It’s what makes it cozy and a safe place like a second home.”
The Facebook page, which quickly grew to include more than 3,000 followers, began with Amazon wish lists that the teachers and staff created.
People from all over the country funded the lists, and included personal donations of everything from money to classroom supplies and outdoor winter clothing for students to wear during recess.
“Some of them are just through friends of friends with a teacher in Maine,” Deschaine said. “They have no idea where Frenchville, Maine, is, so it’s nice, especially right now where this country is with the whole pandemic and everything, for people to come together like this.”
Dr. Levesque Pre-K educator Tracy Caron, who grew up in Frenchville and had attended the school, has 15 students registered for her class.
Pre-K and kindergarten students will be relocated this school year to the St. John Valley Technology Center, while those in grades 1-6 will settle into a wing at Wisdom Middle/High School in the neighboring town of St. Agatha.
Per her classroom wishlist, Caron said she has received “an easel, storage bins and carts, crayons, scissors, toys to build fine motor skills, Play-Doh, paint, paint brushes, basically all the crafting supplies needed for Pre-K.”
“My job is to make things fun for [my students] whether that be through songs or hands on experiences,” she said. “Not only do I get to teach them, but they teach me so much about life. They have a love for life and spark for learning at this age that is contagious.”
SAD 33 librarian Tracie Boucher, who has been working to replace 9,300 library books and helping teachers restore classroom book collections, said the response from bookstores, authors and community members to supply books has been overwhelming.
“It’s a good kind of overwhelming, I can tell you that,” Boucher said.
She first reached out to Heidi Carter, owner of Bogan Books in Fort Kent, which has supported the school in the past.
Carter set up a drive to sell Bogan Books gift cards to be distributed to teachers and is also contributing 20 cents per dollar on every gift card. As of Wednesday, the effort had acquired around $3,000 worth of gift cards, which teachers will use to purchase books of their choice for their classroom libraries.
Boucher also contacted Maine author Lynn Plourde of Winthrop, who wrote “Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud,” “Teacher Appreciation Day” and many more, and had visited Dr. Levesque students before.
Plourde donated some of her own books and also contacted Print: A Bookstore in Portland, which set up a wish list of 100 books for the school library on the business’ webpage. The wish list was quickly filled by generous patrons.
On Thursday, Maine author Chris Van Dusen of Camden visited Wisdom High School to deliver 150 books he had gathered as well as some from his own collection to the Dr. Levesque students. Van Dusen wrote books such as “Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee,” “If I Built a House” and “Even Monsters Have to Sleep.”