PORTLAND, Maine — Portland Public Schools’ former West Program has a new name and a new home, making it more stable and more accessible, school officials say.
But even after the school department spent $3.6 million acquiring and renovating the three-story former Goodwill Industries building at 353 Cumberland Ave. — in part to accommodate the former West Program — some parents have misgivings about the program’s new home.
The program, newly renamed the Bayside Learning Community, occupies the bottom floor of the facility with a front door on Portland Street.
The program had been most recently located in the former Sampson D. Plummer School in Falmouth on a temporary lease, and just prior to that, it was housed in part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland’s former Cathedral School.
For many years previously, the program was based in — and got its name from — the 50-year-old West School on Douglass Circle, a facility that closed this spring after years of falling into disrepair.
The former West Program, now Bayside, provides a dedicated learning environment for students in kindergarten through 12th grade who struggle with emotional disabilities or mental health diagnoses.
“We’ve been in four places in three years,” said Jennifer Searway, who was hired in August as the newest director of the program. “It’s nice to have a stable spot for this program.”
Tina Kenney, a local parent and student advocate, isn’t convinced the new home is the right one.
She criticized the lack of parking spaces for visiting parents at the new facility, and told the Bangor Daily News the bottom-floor level of the former Goodwill Industries building isn’t right for students who may be prone to unsafe or aggressive behaviors.
“Down on that side of the building there are no windows,” she said. “It is inappropriate, in my opinion, that students have no natural light whatsoever. They were moved out of a natural school building, even though it was in Falmouth, to what’s essentially a warehouse in downtown Portland.”
Dr. Victoria Dalzell is a developmental and behavioral specialist with the Pediatric Specialty Care department of Maine Medical Center.
She told the Bangor Daily News she couldn’t comment specifically on the Bayside Learning Community facility, but did say it is “important for kids to be educated in the least restrictive environment possible.”
“It’s optimal for a day program to be in a mainstream school so there are opportunities for peer interaction,” she said.
Searway acknowledged some of the limitations of the program’s new space, but called it “much better” than having to transport students out of town or making due with a dilapidated former school.
At the program’s open house on Thursday night, Searway pointed out that two of the classrooms — the room for middle-school-aged students and the art and music room — do have external windows, and the internal rooms have windows intended to disperse the available natural light as far into the building as possible.
The entirely renovated space is also painted in bright colors, and features five “support rooms” for students who need places to be alone and collect themselves, an occupational therapy room and a double-sized kitchen classroom, where students can learn hands-on cooking or small-business skills.
“[The school department] could’ve come in and just slapped some paint on the walls, but they didn’t,” Searway said. “They came in and widened the hallways and added natural light.”
Searway said the program currently has about 27 students, with a full capacity of 48, and that no class has more than eight students. The students are referred to Bayside only after they’ve shown they struggle both with mainstream classrooms and individualized learning programs within Portland’s other schools.
She said Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk secured grant money from L.L. Bean to help build a new outdoor play area over approximately 60 percent of what’s now the facility’s Cumberland Avenue parking lot.
Searway also said students in the program won’t be confined to the classrooms — because the new location is in the Portland downtown, unlike all of its previous sites, teachers will be able to take students to the nearby Boys & Girls Club, Portland Public Library and Maine Historical Society, among other potentially educational spots.
The program director is urging parents to come see the facility and judge for themselves. She hosted an ice cream social in September and Thursday evening’s open house, and said she hopes to hold some kind of public event at the location about once every month.
