Portland Public School Department News

The senior class at Deering High School in Portland will hold a fundraising walk around Back Cove on Tuesday, June 3 after Senior Last Assembly in honor of their class advisor, Nan Urban, who has ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).  They will be joined by members of the Portland High School Class of 2008.  Proceeds from the walk will go towards the purchase of a specialized computer that will enable Urban to communicate as her disease progresses and to eHope, a local nonprofit group that has assisted her family.

“Nan Urban is known and beloved by thousands of Deering students and families,” said Deering Principal Ken Kunin.  “The seniors came up with this idea themselves as a way to show their affection and to provide some practical help to Nan’s family.”

Urban, a Deering social worker since 1984, retired last June due to her illness.  The school organized an informal group of “Nan’s Fans” to support Urban’s family in various ways. 

The June 3 walk will begin at the Back Cove parking lot across from Hannaford.  Participants will gather at 12:15 p.m. and the walk will begin at 12:30 p.m.

Those participating are asked to wear purple and white, Deering’s school colors.  The event will happen rain or shine.  Urban plans to greet walkers at Back Cove along with her husband, Lee, and son, Chris, a senior at Portland High School.

For more information, please call Deering High School at 874-8260 or visit the Deering website (http://www.portlandschools.org/schools/deering/) and click on “Nan’s Fans.”

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Champlain’s founding of the city of Quebec, students at Casco Bay High School in Portland are preparing a documentary exhibit titled “Le Maine Francophone: Hier et Anjourd’hui” telling the story of Franco-Americans in Maine.  The exhibit will take place at the Franco-American Heritage Center in Lewiston on June 6 at 12:30 p.m.

Since January, Casco Bay High School French students have gone to “La Recontre,” the monthly lunch at the center, where they have spoken with Franco-Americans from the Lewiston area.  Those interviewed will be the subjects of the documentary exhibit.  Casco Bay High School students conducted their interviews in French to use the language in an authentic way.

This project has been made possible through the support of Maine Community Foundation, the American Association of Teachers of French and the Portland Educational Partnership.

A team of seventh grade girls at Moore Middle School in Portland won the Exemplary Portfolio award at the recent Project Citizen State Showcase in Augusta for a project about environmental problems caused by Styrofoam.  Students will present their project to the Portland School Committee on June 4 at 7 p.m. at the committee’s business meeting in Room 250 of Casco Bay High School.

Project Citizen charges students to study a community issue in depth, come up with the solution that they believe holds the most merit and prepare an action plan to implement their solution.  The Moore team’s project, “Fight the White Pollution:  The Dangers of Styrofoam,” is the only one from Maine to advance to the National Project Citizen Showcase in New Orleans in July.

The Moore students drew on the expertise of Bridget Stevens.  As a middle school student in Freeport in 1991, she led the effort to pass one of the country’s first municipal bans on Styrofoam.  Stevens met with the Moore students to help them prepare their project, and she joined them at the State Showcase.

The Moore Project Citizen team plans to continue their work by seeking a Styrofoam ban in Portland.  Students will present their recommendations to the Sustainability Committee of the Portland City Council on May 29 at 5 p.m. in the State of Maine room at City Hall.

The members of the winning team are: Alyssa Donovan, Asisa Isack, Savannah Welch, Hido Abdulleh, Sarah McGeough, Sarah McMann and Carly Ladd.  David Hilton is their social studies teacher at Moore.

“Ramblings,” the student newspaper at Deering High School, recently won three, first-place awards in the Maine Center for Student Journalism contest.

Maureen Quinn, editor-in-chief, won first place in news writing for her story last June about the student walkout protesting cuts in school funding. Jiyeon Kim and Megan Hedrich, layout editors, won first place in layout and design.  Nick Devlin, who is the news editor, won first place in sports writing for his feature about Deering fencer Sam Schack.

Anders Nielsen, the “Ramblings” record reviewer for the past two years, won second place in the arts review category for his commentary on Vampire Weekend.  Photo editor Steven Lee won third place for a photo spread last September about the ALS walkthon in honor of social worker and senior class advisor Nan Urban.

Mary Ann Scaccia, an English and journalism teacher at Deering, is the newspaper advisor.

Michele Arcand saw Hall Elementary School in Portland for the first time a few years ago when she visited the playground with her children.  The building had been constructed nearly 50 years earlier as a temporary school to serve military families in Sagamore Village, and it looked uninviting.  Arcand decided then that she wanted to paint a mural on the outside to make the building more attractive and welcoming so that it would better reflect the warmth of the school community.

After three years of advocacy and hard work, Arcand’s effort finally is coming to fruition.  She teamed up with another parent, artist Sarah Herboldsheimer, to create a 40-panel mural that will be installed on the building’s exterior. 

Every child and employee at Hall - from kindergartners to the principal, custodians and busdrivers - participated in the project by contributing a handprint for the mural.  Every class chose a word that will be written on the mural in English and another of the 21 languages represented by the student population.  The brightly colored panels also incorporate imagery suggested by students, such as a musical note and the basketball hoop in the playground.

The first panels will be installed on Friday, May 16, just in time for Hall School’s 50th anniversary celebration the following day.  Arcand and Herboldsheimer plan to continue work throughout the summer, with the goal of completing the mural by the time school opens in September.

Both women are volunteering their time, and the project has taken over their lives.  They shepherded Arcand’s ambitious idea through several levels of school department approval, solicited donations from local businesses and planned an open mic fundraiser for the project at the Dogfish Café.  They’ve averaged three hours of sleep a night, and they’ve had little time to spend with their families.  The project has taken over Arcand’s driveway; all week, Hall families are dropping by to help with the painting.

But even before the first panel is installed, the project already has accomplished exactly what they had hoped: building pride and a sense of community among Hall School families and neighbors.  

“Our real goal,” said Herboldsheimer, “was to reflect on the outside what’s going on inside the school.”

The Portland School Committee at its May 7th meeting recognized Alfred Padula of Portland for his contributions to the Portland Public Schools as an “an environmentalist, a catalyst, a change agent and an unsung hero.”

School Committee Chair John Coyne read a proclamation citing Padula’s financial contributions to several school projects to encourage energy conservation.  They include:

· $35,000 donated for the installation of solar panels at the East End Community School.
· $25,000 for energy upgrades at Portland High School.
· $15,000 for the geodesic dome at Lincoln Middle School.
· $20,000 for LEED certification of the new Ocean Avenue Elementary School.

Coyne noted that Padula has given his time to work with Lincoln students on sustainability projects, and he has donated equipment and books to the middle school.

Padula retired in 1999 from his position as a Latin American studies professor at the University of Southern Maine.   Since then, he has devoted much of his time, energy and resources to encouraging energy conservation. 

Twenty-five Deering High School students are enrolled in an intensive pre-engineering class that allows them to test theories in lab experiments using automobile, manufacturing technology and telecommunications equipment.  The class, offered through a partnership between Deering and Portland Arts and Technology High School (PATHS), also gives students the opportunity to work with engineers at local companies.

Students spend half of their school day on the semester-long class.   They study pre-engineering theory with John Cobleigh, a Deering advanced physics teacher, and Alan Carp, a Deering advanced pre-calculus teacher.

The class draws on the faculty and facilities of three PATHS programs - manufacturing technology, automobile technology and telecommunications - when conducting experiments that tackle real-world problems. For example, students measured the velocity and distance of a speeding car in one experiment, and they measured periodic electrical signals using an oscilloscope in another.

“We planned field trips to CMP (Central Maine Power) and Fairchild Semiconductor- not just to visit, but to work with their engineers,” said Carp.  The class also drew on the resources of Cianbro and Stantec Consulting.

The course has helped students integrate science and math, apply their knowledge and learn to work cooperatively and independently.  “Students need the capability to work with all types of workers and this is one way we can expose them to that,” Carp said.

Several classes and musical groups at Deering and Portland High are working together on a project that will culminate with a performance of highlights from Gluck’s eighteenth century opera, “Orpheus and Eurydice.”    

Portland High students are translating the myth of Orpheus from French and Latin.  Students are preparing art pieces that illustrate the myth.   Portland High School acting students Jesse Dziedzic, Sidney Dritz and Eileen Hanley are performing from the translated script.  Students from Portland Ballet are dancing in the ballet sequences in the opera.

The Deering High School Chorus directed by Mark Nordli and the Deering-Portland High School Orchestra led by Julianne Eberl will perform the opera highlights with community members on Tuesday, May 27, at 7 p.m. in the Portland High School auditorium.  The concert is free and open to the public; donations at the door are welcome. 

“This is a very special opportunity for our students to be involved in the staging of an opera,” said Eberl.  “We are grateful for all of the community support that has brought the year-long project to fruition.”

The project received a Portland Education Partnership Reachout grant for $300, a $500 grant from the Dettling Family and $1,500 from the Children Matter grant program sponsored by Bank of America.

Julie Goell, a professional singer, bassist and founding member of the Casco Bay Tummlers, is staging the show. Performers include Michael Albert, a Portland High graduate who now works as the registrar at the Portland Conservatory of Music, Christina Astrachan, a professional singer who teaches at Bates College, and Leela Nowrangi, a professional singer and teacher who owns an Old Port art gallery.  About 70 students are involved in the musical performance, ballet sequences, acting segments and technical production.