BDN reporters help make The County a better place by holding officials accountable and shining a light. Your donation can help raise $60,000 this spring to support our reporting. Make a donation now.
Voters in the Presque Isle area school district overwhelmingly approved the closure of the nearly 70-year-old Zippel Elementary School at referendum on Tuesday.
Residents of MSAD 1, the five-community school district that includes Mapleton, Chapman, Castle Hill and Westfield, also passed the district’s $33 million budget by a slightly slimmer margin.
The closure of Zippel will take effect on Friday, at the conclusion of this school year. The move is part of a larger restructuring by the district to reallocate space for the introduction of all-day kindergarten and special education services for younger students. The burden of providing the latter service recently shifted from the state to individual districts.
In a memo to district staff Wednesday morning shared with the Bangor Daily News, Superintendent Ben Greenlaw said the election, held in conjunction with Maine’s high-profile midterm primaries, had “one of our largest voter turnout in years.”
More than 2,000 residents cast ballots for the referendums, with over 70% of voters in Presque Isle and Westfield — the two municipalities that send students to Zippel Elementary — voting to close the school.
MSAD 1’s budget, up $1.4 million from last year and seeking $70,000 in additional taxpayer funding, passed with nearly 69% of the vote.
The district announced its intention to shutter Zippel Elementary in February, citing the building’s aging infrastructure and declining student enrollment in MSAD 1 at large. The closure is projected to save approximately $158,000 annually, after one-time expenses associated with shifting students to other buildings, Greenlaw said previously.
When it begins all-day kindergarten next year, MSAD 1 will be the final school district in Aroostook County to adopt the program, which it has tried to accomplish for a decade.
“Closing Zippel allows us to allocate resources that would be going to keeping the building open and operating, and utilize those resources for full-day kindergarten, which directly benefits our students,” Greenlaw said in a March school board meeting. “I think it’s in the best interest in the district in the long term.”
Students in grades 3-5 who would have gone to Zippel will now attend Presque Isle Middle School, which will be renamed. Seventh and eighth grade students will attend Presque Isle High School, where they will be largely kept to the school’s ground floor, separate from high school-age students.
Renovations to the high school this summer to accommodate the added students will cost $1.3 million, the district projects. That includes a new pickup and drop-off zone for parents, which will be constructed in the current Zippel playground lot. The playground equipment will be moved to the middle school, Greenlaw has said.
MSAD 1 is hosting an end-of-year open house at Zippel from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday to give “parents, students and community members the opportunity to walk the halls of the school,” and to “appreciate the history,” of Zippel Elementary, which opened in 1960 and is named for Eva Hoyt Zippel, a longtime teacher in the district.
A slideshow will play in the school’s gymnasium during the open house, projecting photos of former students, staff and administrators, the district said in a memo.