Portland Public School Department

YOUTHINK, a youth-driven philanthropy project sponsored in part by the Portland Public Schools, is being touted as a model for similar initiatives in Tunisia and other countries.

A Tunisian educator participating in a U.S. State Department fellowship program has visited Portland to learn about YOUTHINK.  Slim Gomri, a Leader for Democracy Fellow at the Academy for Educational Development, is exploring the possibility of starting a youth engagement project in Tunisia modelled partly after the Portland initiative.

YOUTHINK is one of eight projects throughout the country started since 2003 through the Academy’s Youth Innovation Fund.  Jessica Bynoe, the fund’s director, said the Portland project has been particularly successful. That’s why it was chosen as a model for Tunisia, an Arabic country in northern Africa with 10 million people, Bynoe said.

Gomri, a Tunisian teacher, met with the YOUTHINK board during his visit.  He learned about two recent YOUTHINK grants to middle school students working to combat racism and childhood obesity. 

“I was amazed at how youth can have this responsibility,” Gomri said. 

The Academy for Educational Development is seeking seed money from the State Department for a two-year project in Tunisia that would involve U.S. young people as trainers of their Tunisian peers.  Bynoe expressed the hope that one trainer would come from Portland.

An Odyssey of the Mind team from Longfellow Elementary School in Portland placed in the top 10 of their category at the 2007 Odyssey of the Mind World Finals in East Lansing, Michigan.

The seven-member team won a first place award at the state competition at Colby College in April.  At the World Finals in May, they competed against 61 other elementary schools and tied for sixth place.  The competition was held at Michigan State University.

Team members are Francesca Butterfield, Zac Dufour, Peter Dutton, Erin Mahoney, Griffin Py, Charlotte Spritz and Justin Very. 

Two students from the automotive mechanics program at Portland Arts and Technology High School (PATHS) won the state championship in the Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills Competition.

Craig Gobeil and Brian Haskell competed against nine other teams for scholarships valued at $12,000 each.  Another team of PATHS students, Aaron Dawley and Dave Metivier, won fifth place and scholarships valued at $4,000 each.

Gobeil and Haskell will advance to the national competition in Dearborn, Michigan on June 24.  They will compete against teams from the other 49 states for additional scholarship money.  

East End Community School in Portland celebrated its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification in a May 25th ceremony. 

LEED certification, based on a rating system by the U.S. Green Building Council, is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.  East End Community School is believed to be the first K-12 public school in Maine to receive Silver certification.  Baxter School for the Deaf, a private state school, also received that recognition for a new academic building.

East End Community School is a high performance, energy efficient building.  The school’s design incorporates extensive use of natural light, a “green” vegetated roof over one section and 2.6 kilowatt solar panels.  A grant from the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership and a donation from Portland resident Fred Padula helped pay for those features. 

The school was designed by Stephen Blatt Architects in consultation with Portland Public Schools, Community Workshops and Fore Solutions.  Ledgewood Construction received a 2007 Maine Build Award for the project.  The school also received a 2006 Merit Building Award for Excellence in Sustainable Design and Development from Integrated Design, Integrated Development. 

A Portland School Committee policy adopted in 2005 ensures that parents have school choice, also known as out-of-district placement. That means parents with students districted for a certain school have the option of applying to another Portland school on a space-available basis.

Students are assigned to schools based on geographic areas or districts within the city. For example, when Baxter Elementary School was closed, the students were re-districted to Longfellow, Riverton or Presumpscot schools.

All the students who would have attended Baxter are districted for Lyman Moore Middle School at the end of their fifth grade year. Lyman Moore holds spaces open for those students as well as for students from East End Community School (EECS) and Presumpscot Elementary School.

Lincoln Middle School holds spaces open for its sending schools: Hall, Longfellow and Riverton. King Middle School holds open spaces for Longfellow, Reiche and Nathan Clifford. If schools have open seats (space available), they can accept applicants from out-of-district Portland schools until seats are filled.

What happens if a school has more requests for out-of-district placements than it has space available? The school holds a lottery to fill seats.

The procedure for applying for school choice is simple and straight forward. Parents may write a brief letter to Assistant Superintendent Jeanne Whynot-Vickers stating the educational reasons supporting their request. She reviews all letters and then forwards them to the appropriate principal.

Every effort is made to meet the request if spaces are available. There are two caveats: Students must re-apply each year to attend an out-of-district school. And parents/students are responsible for transportation to an out-of-district school.

The only exceptions are East End Community School and the Many Rivers program at Hall Elementary School.

EECS has 100 out-of-district spaces to be filled by lottery; transportation for out-of-district students is provided by the school district. Students need not re-apply each year.

Entrance to the Many Rivers Program is by lottery; transportation for out-of-district students is provided. Students need not re-apply each year.

For more information on enrollment at EECS or Many Rivers, please contact the school principals- Carol Dayn at EECS (874-8185) and Deirdre Steiner at Hall (874-8205).

The Portland High School Environmental Club has received the 2007 eco-Excellence Award for outstanding contributions to recycling and energy conservation from ecomaine, the municipally-owned solid waste disposal organization in southern Maine.  Out of 21 projects honored, Portland High won the grand prize.

Students in the club have advocated for increased recycling and energy and water conservation measures in the Portland Public Schools, with a particular focus on Portland High School.  Their efforts resulted in improved recycling at the school and the removal of classroom lights deemed unnecessary.

The Environmental Club also filmed a public service announcement about recycling for access television, researched installing hallway sensors to eliminate unnecessary lighting at Portland High, identified drafty windows and faulty bathroom faucets needing replacement, planned an environmental fair for the school and presented “green lessons” to elementary and middle school classes.

Alfred Padula, chair of the Maine Green Campus Consortium, has donated $25,000 for additional energy conservation improvements at Portland High School, as identified by the Environmental Club.  Padula also has contributed $15,000 toward the construction of a geodesic dome at Lincoln Middle School.

Ecomaine presented the Environmental Club with a plaque that now hangs in the main office of Portland High. The grand prize - an LL Bean Adirondack rocking chair made with 100 percent recycled materials - has been placed in the Portland High library.

Portland High students Brooke Welty, Dan Whitmore, Rachel Heasley and Bly Lauritano accepted the award at a luncheon on April 24.  Troy Moon, an ecomaine board member and Portland’s manager of solid waste, described the students as “tireless advocates for the environment.”