ORONO, Maine — Please excuse Jim Chasse if he spends a lot of time on Facebook.
But he has a good reason. Chasse, who is the new principal of Orono High School, intends to expand Orono’s connections with the Internet. He envisions using popular social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter — he even started a Facebook group called Red Riot Pride, named after the school’s Red Riot mascot — to further the school’s efforts to get plugged in.
“My goal is to be the best-communicated high school in the state,” Chasse said in a recent interview in his office. “We want to be almost streaming in real time from sports scores to the school play schedule to Project Graduation to informing parents at the classroom level what the kids are studying.”
Chasse intends to bring to Orono the same technology-minded approach he used at some of the other stops he has made in his career.
He arrived in Orono this summer after three years at Piscataquis High School in Guilford and Bangor Christian School before that. It’s a lot of changes in 10 years, Chasse said.
“Some people stay in one place, but I’m not of that mold, so to speak,” he said. “It was difficult to leave Guilford because you get connected to kids and faculty, but new experiences present new challenges and it brings me growth as a person. That’s what’s fun about changes. It is different, for sure, and I’m enjoying it so far.”
A resident of Veazie, Chasse said he sees himself staying much longer at Orono, especially with a daughter at the school and two more in lower grades.
Chasse has been heavily involved in technology at almost every stop in the last 10 years of his career.
At Piscataquis, he helped oversee a school that was the state’s first site for one-to-one laptops — that is, each student had his or her own. Chasse started his administrative career as a principal and curriculum and technology coordinator in the elementary school serving the Carmel, Levant, Etna and Dixmont area.
Orono High decided to buy into the one-to-one laptop program, too, and the portable computers are currently being formatted so as to be ready for students by the beginning of the second quarter. If the response at Orono is anything like that at Piscataquis, Chasse said, students will have the opportunity to expand their interests, focus intently on one subject, learn computer ethics and citizenship, and explore the world beyond their classroom.
Imagine, he said as an example, the kind of aspirations generated when students take virtual tours of every college and university in the country.
“I think it’s going to be wonderful,” Chasse said. “It’s an information explosion. The challenge is placing a value on that, the aspirations and information. It’s not part of our curriculum per se, but it’s phenomenal.”
The school also is upgrading its fiber-optic and wireless networks, he added.
A native of the Lewiston, Wilton and Farmington areas, Chasse has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Maine just up Route 2 from the high school. He’d like to continue to strengthen Orono High’s relationship to UMaine, especially with several students already taking classes there and some teachers serving as adjunct professors on campus.
He also is dealing with the challenge of the school’s conversion from Union 87 to RSU 26, where the Orono schools are joined by Veazie and Glenburn. Chasse is focusing on attracting students from the latter communities, which have school choice, to Orono, the RSU’s high school.
Chasse wants to do that by spreading the word about the school — “sharing the story” of Orono, as he put it — which he said performs above state averages for SAT scores and is at the same level as most of the top local public and private schools.
Expect the message to come through both traditional and more technologically advanced means.
“It’s funny, if you wanted all the students to know something, I can probably inform everybody quicker [through Facebook] than I can using the PA system or going to classrooms or having an assembly,” Chasse said. “It’s amazing. But it’s their world. You can’t stop progress, so you [have to] capitalize on progress for the student learning piece so that our kids are best-suited to compete when they leave.”