Published in the Current
Facing a $486,000 cut in state education funding, the Cape Elizabeth School Board is proposing a 2003-2004 budget with no new programs, and the superintendent is warning that Cape schools are “falling behind” in their ability to meet the community’s high expectations.
Based on Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed budget, the Cape school budget, up 2.75 percent over this year’s total, would result in a 4.06 percent tax increase. District statistics indicate that if state funding were kept constant, the tax increase would be 0.23 percent. Baldacci’s budget has yet to be approved by the Legislature.
Several town councilors had asked the School Board for no more than a 2 percent tax rate increase.
Superintendent Tom Forcella told School Board members at a workshop Tuesday night that he did not hear a consensus from the council on that. “What I heard at that meeting were two or three council members” asking for the 2 percent cap, he said.
There is new spending in the budget, to provide additional help to meet Maine Learning Results and the federal No Child Left Behind requirements, as well as adding legally required special education staff members.
Enrollment at the three schools is expected to be flat, meaning no regular teaching positions will be added or cut.
The $15,328,320 budget also restores half of the capital improvement funding cut from this year’s budget. Additionally, it uses $200,000 in savings from a spending freeze last year to offset revenue shortfalls. The board had previously asked the council to use that $200,000 to make urgent repairs at the high school.
Forcella said the proposed budget is not enough to halt a slide in Cape’s education spending, and he painted a picture of crisis in Cape’s financial support of the schools.
“We’re not even maintaining where we’ve been,” he said. “We’re falling behind.”
Citing the community’s pride in the quality of its schools, Forcella made it clear the district wants to be able to spend more money. “If our expectation is to be the best, we need to have the resources to get us there.”
He said further cuts will jeopardize the quality of the schools, including its highly successful music program, which recently won acclaim at the Berklee Jazz Festival in Boston.
“(Low spending) will take a toll at some point in time,” Forcella said.
Forcella reiterated his concerns that Cape’s per-pupil spending is dropping, as compared with other districts in Cumberland County and around the state, including many to which the district often compares itself.
“We have people who want the highest performing district” but are not supporting it with the financial backing given to other high-performing districts, Forcella said.
Board member Kevin Sweeney said the per-pupil comparison shows a very different view from statistics the Town Council has recently cited, indicating that Cape Elizabeth has higher education spending per capita than any other town in Maine.
Despite his misgivings, Forcella put forward a budget that includes no new programs, and incorporates several cost-saving initiatives.
The proposed budget includes savings of nearly $20,000 by sharing a psychologist with Cumberland and North Yarmouth rather than contracting out those services,
It also assumes two large construction projects – renovations to Pond Cove and the high school – will not go forward in time to avoid using portable classrooms.
Business Manager Pauline Aportria told the board the budget included savings of $57,000 in architectural fees for the two projects. “We don’t need Bob Howe,” the project architect, Aportria said. The budget does include $10,000 for architectural work related to putting portable classrooms at Pond Cove.
One possible variable is the cost of heating oil. The budget assumes the district will be able to purchase oil for $1 per gallon, but it has not yet been able to lock in a price with any suppliers, Aportria said.
Possible areas for future cuts include athletics and the technology budget, according to board member George Entwistle. “This is going to be a tough year. We may need to make some tough choices,” he said.
The technology budget presently includes money to purchase a student information system, which would track students in all grade levels, keeping records of attendance, grades and progress toward the Maine Learning Results.
Thursday, February 27, 2003
Death be not subtle: Thanatron full of crushing blows
Published in the Portland Phoenix
You read it here first: When the generation now in their 20s and 30s take political power in this country, assisted suicide will be made legal. Nobody wants to die the way we have watched our grandparents and parents die. Much better to die with dignity than to slowly ebb away like a sandbar before a storm.
Written and directed by Carolyn Gage. With Megan Dauphinais, Sheila Jackson, Muriel Kenderdine, Jessica Porter, Liz Rensenbrink, and Vic Symonds. At Portland Stage Company’s Studio Theater, through March 16. Call (207) 774-0465.
You read it here first: When the generation now in their 20s and 30s take political power in this country, assisted suicide will be made legal. Nobody wants to die the way we have watched our grandparents and parents die. Much better to die with dignity than to slowly ebb away like a sandbar before a storm.
But dying with a party, before you’re even past your prime? Isn’t that overkill? Carolyn Gage raises questions like these in Thanatron (the latest production by Cauldron & Labrys, her all-women’s theater project) in which a middle-aged mother of four (Molly Hawthorne, played by Liz Rensenbrink) fears her memory is failing, and decides she wants to die. A clever, if overly enthusiastic, Kevorkian–like doctor (played by Sheila Jackson) has determined a means by which people can calculate their quality of life, thereby determining "with 95-percent accuracy" who will want to off themselves and when. He has also built a death machine — Thanatron — to "take the risk out of" suicide.
To make herself feel better about her precipitous decision, Molly throws a farewell party, inviting her whole family and the neighbors. The play follows the family through the lead-up to the party, as they struggle with the concepts of leaving and remembering, and past what is literally a moment of truth.
Is Molly a "progressive woman" who is "ahead of her time," as her husband Frank (Jessica Porter) says, or is she just wishing for release, already so beaten down that she yields to her stereotypically traditional mother even in choosing the dress in which she’ll die.
The family — with the exception of the youngest, Caitlin (Megan Dauphinais), and the lesbian housekeeper (Dani, played by Vic Symonds) — greets Molly’s decision with obvious glee. The two sons go so far as to hand-build a custom-fit coffin for their mother to repose in, and Frank keeps reminding everyone that it is "almost time."
Clearly, Gage has set out to hit the audience over the head with the idea that men, families, and society kill women spiritually long before they die physically. As such, it is a success both on stage — where a renewed Molly literally hits the doctor on the head, leaving him to stagger across the stage into the coffin — and off, when the audience leaves with no room for post-play dialogue or introspection.
All conflicts are resolved on stage, leaving no openings for wonder or further intellectual investigation after the show is over. As the play ends, women are vindicated, triumphant and empowered. This excellent and exciting message is delivered, over and over again, in a painstakingly literal play.
Nothing is left to the imagination, nor even to involved spectation. When there is a point to be made, it is laid out in so many words. First there is the doctor, played by a woman but clearly a male character, and his phallic-symbol IV-drip stand feeding on the very idea of the death of a woman. Caitlin and Dani, one who says she wants to be a lesbian when she grows up and the other already there, conspire to foul the IV drip to prevent Molly’s death, and to supply, instead, a revelatory dose of truth serum, transforming death into truth.
All of the elements — the family’s grim excitement, the strong women’s objections, and the husband’s leering affair with the still-passionate neighbor — end up as large, glass bottles to be smashed over the head of each audience member.
When the time comes and Molly begins to reveal memories she has repressed, the party turns ugly. As Molly remembers repressed abuse, the men in the room scuffle and murder her, preferring a dead woman to the truth.
But even the ugliness draws a laugh, and indeed the play is written to be a comic farce rather than the morbidly serious drama it could also be. Characters are cartoons and play out stereotypical roles well beyond the normal realm of absurdity, which results in audience members laughing their heads off as the death machine is erected on stage.
Dani and Caitlin stage a further redemptive moment for Molly, whom they have managed to save from herself, and even this bears an obvious message that Gage does not leave to the spectator’s brain, instead forcing the issue by delivering the message in dialogue.
The play is darkly funny and well-cast, with Rensenbrink exceeding all expectations of a loving but disoriented mother, Dauphinais acting her age to a T, and the stage-debuting Symonds doing very well but needing to deliver her lines without cracking a smile when she knows the audience will laugh.
The opening and closing scenes are the hardest parts to handle: the beginning seems very nearly not part of the play at all, and the final word is spoken so often that it becomes impossible not to remember, remember, remember, remember.
THANATRONWritten and directed by Carolyn Gage. With Megan Dauphinais, Sheila Jackson, Muriel Kenderdine, Jessica Porter, Liz Rensenbrink, and Vic Symonds. At Portland Stage Company’s Studio Theater, through March 16. Call (207) 774-0465.
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Student assessment rules a maze
Published in the Current
Despite district concerns that as many as 20 current eighth-graders may not satisfy state requirements for high school graduation, Cape Elizabeth teachers are not getting the help they need from the state.
“There are still a lot of unanswered questions and missing pieces,” said Sarah Simmonds, the district’s facilitator of curriculum, assessment and professional development.
In the meantime, teachers are continuing their work creating a local assessment and tracking system, and figuring out how to identify and support students who are struggling to meet educational standards.
It’s something the schools have been working on for a while, Simmonds said. The effort began a few years ago when Superintendent Tom Forcella started to develop a district-wide Future Direction Plan, Simmonds said.
Since then, state and federal requirements and guidelines have entered the picture, with the Maine Learning Results and the No Child Left Behind Act. All of these leave districts and teachers in a bind. They know they need to move toward the goals of the laws, but need government guidance about what exactly will satisfy the requirements.
There are two big questions. First, will students be permitted to receive high school diplomas if they do not meet the Maine Learning Results standards in all eight content areas?
Second, what impact will those standards have on special education students?
The state has not yet made clear to schools what will be required for issuing a diploma. If diplomas are available only to students who meet all content standards, other students, entitled only to a certificate of attendance, may suffer in the job market, Simmonds said.
But schools also want to acknowledge the achievements of students who have met the standards. “We have to understand the consequences,” Simmonds said.
Special education could be another variable. Individual education plans, developed for all students in special education, lay out goals for students to work toward. When adapted to take into account students’ special needs, those plans, called IEPs, can differ from curricular goals for non-special-education students.
If students who meet the goals of the IEPs are given diplomas, regardless of whether they meet the Learning Results standards, more parents will be asking for their kids to get special education services, Simmonds said.
“Learning Results is about high standards for all kids,” Simmonds said. That much is clear, but “the devil is in the details,” she said.
Students who need support should get it, Simmonds said. Teachers are working on how to identify them systematically, as well as how to meet their needs once students at risk of not graduating are identified.
A support structure is likely to include help during the academic year, possibly from teachers or other school staff, who are available during students’ free periods or before or after school.
It may also include what Simmonds called “a standards-based summer school,” which would be different from the stereotypical summer school, because students would be given assistance with the specific areas in which they need help. A student with fairly few needs could spend as little as a couple of days in summer school if things went well, Simmonds said, while a student who needed help in several areas or had significant difficulties with a set of topics could spend a few weeks.
Other problems are more administrative. To respect the tradition of “local control” for school districts, the state Legislature laid out broad standards and left it to schools to determine how those standards would be met, measured and recorded.
Many teachers never learned how to do this during their training, Simmonds said. The state has made available guideline assessments and standards for teachers to use, but most teachers around the state don’t want to use the state’s suggestions, and start to make changes.
Documenting the outcomes from the assessments is also a challenge. State and federal officials are only now beginning to specify how they need to receive information from schools, and there are others who need that information, too. Parents and teachers need to know how their students are measuring up to the standards.
To further complicate matters, colleges still look for grade-point-averages, class rank and SAT scores, which will need to be on official transcripts.
In the end, the bottom line should be that if a student does not get a diploma after four years at CEHS, “it shouldn’t be a surprise,” Simmonds said.
Despite district concerns that as many as 20 current eighth-graders may not satisfy state requirements for high school graduation, Cape Elizabeth teachers are not getting the help they need from the state.
“There are still a lot of unanswered questions and missing pieces,” said Sarah Simmonds, the district’s facilitator of curriculum, assessment and professional development.
In the meantime, teachers are continuing their work creating a local assessment and tracking system, and figuring out how to identify and support students who are struggling to meet educational standards.
It’s something the schools have been working on for a while, Simmonds said. The effort began a few years ago when Superintendent Tom Forcella started to develop a district-wide Future Direction Plan, Simmonds said.
Since then, state and federal requirements and guidelines have entered the picture, with the Maine Learning Results and the No Child Left Behind Act. All of these leave districts and teachers in a bind. They know they need to move toward the goals of the laws, but need government guidance about what exactly will satisfy the requirements.
There are two big questions. First, will students be permitted to receive high school diplomas if they do not meet the Maine Learning Results standards in all eight content areas?
Second, what impact will those standards have on special education students?
The state has not yet made clear to schools what will be required for issuing a diploma. If diplomas are available only to students who meet all content standards, other students, entitled only to a certificate of attendance, may suffer in the job market, Simmonds said.
But schools also want to acknowledge the achievements of students who have met the standards. “We have to understand the consequences,” Simmonds said.
Special education could be another variable. Individual education plans, developed for all students in special education, lay out goals for students to work toward. When adapted to take into account students’ special needs, those plans, called IEPs, can differ from curricular goals for non-special-education students.
If students who meet the goals of the IEPs are given diplomas, regardless of whether they meet the Learning Results standards, more parents will be asking for their kids to get special education services, Simmonds said.
“Learning Results is about high standards for all kids,” Simmonds said. That much is clear, but “the devil is in the details,” she said.
Students who need support should get it, Simmonds said. Teachers are working on how to identify them systematically, as well as how to meet their needs once students at risk of not graduating are identified.
A support structure is likely to include help during the academic year, possibly from teachers or other school staff, who are available during students’ free periods or before or after school.
It may also include what Simmonds called “a standards-based summer school,” which would be different from the stereotypical summer school, because students would be given assistance with the specific areas in which they need help. A student with fairly few needs could spend as little as a couple of days in summer school if things went well, Simmonds said, while a student who needed help in several areas or had significant difficulties with a set of topics could spend a few weeks.
Other problems are more administrative. To respect the tradition of “local control” for school districts, the state Legislature laid out broad standards and left it to schools to determine how those standards would be met, measured and recorded.
Many teachers never learned how to do this during their training, Simmonds said. The state has made available guideline assessments and standards for teachers to use, but most teachers around the state don’t want to use the state’s suggestions, and start to make changes.
Documenting the outcomes from the assessments is also a challenge. State and federal officials are only now beginning to specify how they need to receive information from schools, and there are others who need that information, too. Parents and teachers need to know how their students are measuring up to the standards.
To further complicate matters, colleges still look for grade-point-averages, class rank and SAT scores, which will need to be on official transcripts.
In the end, the bottom line should be that if a student does not get a diploma after four years at CEHS, “it shouldn’t be a surprise,” Simmonds said.
On Active Duty: Airman First Class Mike Layton
Published in the Current
Airman First Class Mike Layton, a 2001 CEHS graduate, has been in Bahrain providing support for the war in Afghanistan since his 19th birthday, Nov. 26, 2002. He was initially supposed to be there for 90 days, said his father, also named Mike. But now Mike the younger has been “frozen,” meaning he will be staying in that location for the time being, his father said.
Layton has been in the Air Force for a year and a half. He joined right out of high school and is now assigned to the 509th Security Forces Squadron, which normally provides security at Whiteman Air Force Base, Knob Noster, Mo., the home of the B-2 Stealth bomber.
Layton volunteered for overseas duty, and his father said he wants to be a policeman when he gets out of the military. Layton’s father is himself a 24-year veteran of the Coast Guard now working in law enforcement.
The family e-mails Layton regularly and also sends pre-paid phone cards so Layton can call home, his father said. In addition to the people in his family, “the dog misses him,” his father said.
Airman First Class Mike Layton, a 2001 CEHS graduate, has been in Bahrain providing support for the war in Afghanistan since his 19th birthday, Nov. 26, 2002. He was initially supposed to be there for 90 days, said his father, also named Mike. But now Mike the younger has been “frozen,” meaning he will be staying in that location for the time being, his father said.
Layton has been in the Air Force for a year and a half. He joined right out of high school and is now assigned to the 509th Security Forces Squadron, which normally provides security at Whiteman Air Force Base, Knob Noster, Mo., the home of the B-2 Stealth bomber.
Layton volunteered for overseas duty, and his father said he wants to be a policeman when he gets out of the military. Layton’s father is himself a 24-year veteran of the Coast Guard now working in law enforcement.
The family e-mails Layton regularly and also sends pre-paid phone cards so Layton can call home, his father said. In addition to the people in his family, “the dog misses him,” his father said.
Cape volunteers become brothers’ keepers
Published in the Current
Several Cape Elizabeth High School students, in cooperation with high school students from other towns and the United Way of Greater Portland, are trying to give homeless teenagers in the area a better shot at making it by providing them with a backpack filled with the essentials of daily life.
Leslie Preti, Whitney Turkanis, Hannah Botto, Mary Ann Chapman and Schuyler Armstrong are among a group called Youth Engaged in Service, or YES, getting teens involved in community service and leadership through the United Way.
They want to put together 50 backpacks, 25 for males and 25 for females, with toiletries, pens, phone cards, batteries and more. The catch is they have to do all the work themselves.
Jessica Esch, the United Way coordinator of the project, said her job is basically to facilitate the kids’ efforts and make sure they all stay more or less on track. It is up to the teens to decide what projects they want to undertake and to carry them out, Esch said.
“It’s a loose group because kids are so busy,” Esch said.
Students find out about it from their friends, who have been involved with it in previous years. “The word just kind of gets spread around the schools,” Botto said.
Three CEHS students were in YES last year, and five are in it this year. Some of the students involved found out about it through the Volunteer Club at the high school. Jill Dalfonso of South Portland, a student at Catherine McAuley High School in Portland, said her school’s Key Club is the way most students learn about YES.
The year’s first task is to decide what the group will focus on. “When we had our first meeting, we just kind of started yelling out random ideas,” Preti said.
They were inspired by a flyer Turkanis had found about the BluePack Project, an initiative giving school and basic hygiene supplies to children in Afghanistan.
“We decided we wanted to help people our own age,” Armstrong said. They are now out soliciting donations of goods and money from community members, businesses and non-profit organizations.
Some of the work involves writing formal grant proposals to organizations like the Libra Foundation.
Other efforts involve heading to a local dentist and asking for help buying toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental floss, or asking Sam’s Club in Scarborough for toiletries.
Donations of money are also helpful, and the students plan how they will spend the money, depending on how the solicitation goes for donations of actual products.
They also learn to revise their plans as they go along, determining – with the help of the staff at the Preble Street Teen Center – that deodorant and socks are more important than, say, playing cards.
They also ensure that each backpack has a personal touch, with a container of nice lotion for young women and shaving cream for the young men.
Several Cape Elizabeth High School students, in cooperation with high school students from other towns and the United Way of Greater Portland, are trying to give homeless teenagers in the area a better shot at making it by providing them with a backpack filled with the essentials of daily life.
Leslie Preti, Whitney Turkanis, Hannah Botto, Mary Ann Chapman and Schuyler Armstrong are among a group called Youth Engaged in Service, or YES, getting teens involved in community service and leadership through the United Way.
They want to put together 50 backpacks, 25 for males and 25 for females, with toiletries, pens, phone cards, batteries and more. The catch is they have to do all the work themselves.
Jessica Esch, the United Way coordinator of the project, said her job is basically to facilitate the kids’ efforts and make sure they all stay more or less on track. It is up to the teens to decide what projects they want to undertake and to carry them out, Esch said.
“It’s a loose group because kids are so busy,” Esch said.
Students find out about it from their friends, who have been involved with it in previous years. “The word just kind of gets spread around the schools,” Botto said.
Three CEHS students were in YES last year, and five are in it this year. Some of the students involved found out about it through the Volunteer Club at the high school. Jill Dalfonso of South Portland, a student at Catherine McAuley High School in Portland, said her school’s Key Club is the way most students learn about YES.
The year’s first task is to decide what the group will focus on. “When we had our first meeting, we just kind of started yelling out random ideas,” Preti said.
They were inspired by a flyer Turkanis had found about the BluePack Project, an initiative giving school and basic hygiene supplies to children in Afghanistan.
“We decided we wanted to help people our own age,” Armstrong said. They are now out soliciting donations of goods and money from community members, businesses and non-profit organizations.
Some of the work involves writing formal grant proposals to organizations like the Libra Foundation.
Other efforts involve heading to a local dentist and asking for help buying toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental floss, or asking Sam’s Club in Scarborough for toiletries.
Donations of money are also helpful, and the students plan how they will spend the money, depending on how the solicitation goes for donations of actual products.
They also learn to revise their plans as they go along, determining – with the help of the staff at the Preble Street Teen Center – that deodorant and socks are more important than, say, playing cards.
They also ensure that each backpack has a personal touch, with a container of nice lotion for young women and shaving cream for the young men.
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