George Stevens Academy, a private town academy in Blue Hill that has long served as the area’s de facto high school, is hoping to sign contracts with sending towns to help it stabilize years of flagging enrollment and finances.
The school – one of a handful of town academies remaining from the early history of Maine’s rural education system – has lost more than a third of its enrollment since 2020. It has gone through two rounds of staff layoffs in an effort to stabilize its budget, while asking towns for additional tuition dollars for the last six years.
If residents agree to contract proposals, it would put significant limits on a long history of school choice for the Blue Hill Peninsula towns that send students there, GSA officials said last week. The school’s supporters warn that the center of the community is at stake, a situation faced by other small towns across Maine as student populations shrink and school operating costs rise.
Any contracts would be voluntary agreements between the school and its seven sending towns – Blue Hill, Brooklin, Brooksville, Castine, Surry, Sedgwick and Penobscot – and likely wouldn’t take effect until at least the 2027-28 school year.
Without enrollment guarantees from them, the school is on track to lose $250,000 a year by 2030.
The idea has met with some ire from parents who use taxpayer-funded school choice dollars to send their children elsewhere. About a third of area students attend other high schools, and in most towns that figure is closer to half, according to enrollment data provided by the school districts.
Other common choices other than GSA include Blue Hill Harbor School, Bucksport High School, Deer Isle-Stonington High School, Ellsworth High School and John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor.
Families whose children attend those other schools have generally stayed quiet as GSA has asked towns for more money on top of tuition, even as it continues to lose enrollment and cut offerings, according to Sean Dooley, a Blue Hill parent who opposes the initiative. But they’re now weighing in, forming social media groups and websites opposing the suggestion.
“People are angry, people are insulted, and I think rightfully so,” he said. “I’m one of them.”
A former select board member, Dooley was also a member of the school’s budget advisory committee, which it formed in 2022 to give towns input as costs rose. When it began requesting more money from sending towns in 2019, some residents were critical of its communication around the process but still voted to pay the extra funds.
The school continued to lose students, cut a dozen jobs in 2023, and announced last month that it would cut $325,000 more in positions.
This year, Surry’s finance committee recommended against granting the supplemental tuition request, the Weekly Packet newspaper reported. Towns that agree to contracts won’t get those requests anymore, and the board has decided to reduce the amount they are asking for in additional funding.
Ill will from the tuition request rollout has also lingered, according to Dooley, and contributes to resistance to the contract idea.
He’s skeptical of the school’s projected breakeven point of 220 students, recalling that he joined its advisory committee back when enrollment of 265 was a concern. This year, it has a little more than 200 students.
School officials have said the contracts would keep about $1 million in tax dollars on the peninsula.
“That money could stay here, revive your community school, support local jobs, and save our kids hours [on the bus],” Head of School Dan Welch said.
GSA currently is financially healthy, Welch said, but “seeks excellence” with the stability of guaranteed enrollment. That would also allow the school to invest in becoming what students want and need to stay on the peninsula, board members said.
The school hasn’t said how many contracts it would need to succeed, but current enrollment data shows success would likely depend on an agreement with Blue Hill, which has 127 high schoolers overall. The other six towns put together have about 195 teenagers in total, the most in Surry, with 56.
Towns that do sign contracts are promised a seat on the school’s board of trustees, which recently opened parts of its meetings to the public but for the most part still govern it privately.
Across Maine, 48 towns have full high school choice, according to a 2021 study by the Maine Policy Institute. This structure exists primarily for towns without public high schools, a role filled in some areas by private town academies like GSA.
Other town academies have faced enrollment declines and budgeting challenges of their own across the state in recent years. Several have similar contracts with their own sending towns, according to GSA.
Many implemented international student programs to help subsidize operations as local populations shrank, but the pandemic upended those income streams for some schools, including GSA. The school sold its residential buildings and now places students with homestay families, a program it could expand with more hosts, Welch said recently.
When the latest staff cuts were announced in December, he told the Bangor Daily News the school’s other efforts toward sustainability include looking into international baccalaureate certification, increasing recruiting and expanding community engagement efforts.
Officials have also highlighted the school’s academic achievements and college placements, along with its plans to expand technical education in the coming years with several hefty donations.
Enrollment has already gone up by seven students this year, board members said. They also emphasized that the contracts would be a community decision and not forced by the school.
More community dialogue is planned about the contract idea, which would be followed by a petition process if it gains traction, GSA officials said. If towns support it, negotiations will begin between towns, local school officials and the school.
“When GSA thrives, everybody benefits,” Welch said. “When it struggles, everybody loses.”