EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — Fifteen students from Schenck High School and neighboring Stearns High School in Millinocket appealed to the school board Wednesday to reject a proposal to end the two schools’ award-winning Unified Harmony Show Choir.
The board is considering creating a Schenck choir and preventing Schenck students from attending the Stearns-based program to give more East Millinocket and Medway kids a chance to perform in the highly competitive atmosphere.
Approximately 100 Millinocket, Medway and East Millinocket students are performing in choirs at all school levels, including 49 at the Medway Middle School program and 31 with the Unified choir, Of the 31, five are from Schenck, officials said.
“We have a whole lot of kids that seem to be involved in it,” board Chairman Ryan Whitehouse said during the meeting at Schenck. “It seems like there is plenty of room for another show choir. It is certainly not a punitive thing.”
Schenck High School parent Michelle Hatch said that dividing the team would sacrifice excellence and the competition that develops it. The choir, she said, is a family, where students from the three towns lose any town labels and work together wonderfully well — a good lesson in a region often divided by politics and old mill rivalries.
But some Schenck students fear being picked on at Stearns, a student representative to the board said, and others don’t try out because they fear rejection. Choir members said confronting fear is part of growth, an explanation board member Angel Danforth seemed to reject.
“It’s about the kids that stand in the background,” said Danforth of the proposal. “We have something for the kids that are the Fab 5 or are in the top 10 … this community is not built on” only the students who excel the most.
No choir hazing or violence have been reported to Millinocket school officials, said Superintendent Frank Boynton, who played bass guitar at student choir practices and performances at their requests for the last few months.
The relationship between the Millinocket school board and its neighboring school boards has been contentious. A Medway board member drew protest when he made disparaging Facebook comments about a Stearns fight where a female student was kicked in the head. Millinocket’s consolidation offers have been rejected repeatedly by East Millinocket, and board members have had nasty confrontations — one ended with a student upbraiding the adults for their supposed immaturity.
The choir, however, has won five first places, four second places and one third place in
statewide Maine Music Educators Association competitions since it began in 2007. That record puts the program among the state’s elite, Stearns music director Matthew Waite said.
Danforth said that the board hadn’t discussed the issue with Millinocket officials. Hatch encouraged them to do so. After the meeting, choir members said they feared that their family was going to be chewed up in old regional rivalries and that they would also lose the use of the superior facilities at Stearns, which has a full auditorium.
“I don’t understand,” Stearns High School senior Noah Brown said, “how taking something away from students, something that works this well, is a good thing.”
The board’s budget and programming deliberations are continuing, Whitehouse said.