Portland Public School Department News

Casco Bay High School will move next fall to the former Baxter Elementary School on Ocean Avenue, Portland Superintendent Mary Jo O’Connor announced.

The high school will take over space previously used by Portland Adult Education and the district’s Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Programs.  Those offices will move to the school’s current space at Portland Arts and Technology High School (PATHS) on Allen Avenue.

Baxter School has a dozen large classrooms, a small gymnasium, a field and several acres of undeveloped woods.  Students in the Expenditionary Learning Outward Bound high school will have the opportunity this spring to help design the school’s new space as part of an intensive course, said Principal Derek Pierce. 

A joint school-city committee working on plans for Portland’s elementary facilities has considered Baxter as a possible site for a new elementary school.  O’Connor stressed that the site is large enough to accommodate a new school and the existing one.

Casco Bay High School opened in the fall of 2005 with a freshman class.  An additional class will be added each year until it is a four-year school with 400 students.  A task force has been meeting since October to research a permanent home for the school.

Pierce said that qualified Casco Bay students will continue to receive bus service next fall.  Interested juniors will be able to access PATHS programs as previously planned, he added.