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CORNVILLE

Cornville school due to close

By Doug Harlow dharlow@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

SKOWHEGAN -- In the end Thursday night, smaller wasn't better.

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VANISHING SCHOOL: Mary Stuart, a sixth-grade teacher at Cornville Elementary School, addresses members of the School Administrative District 54 board Thursday night in the Skowhegan Area Middle School gymnasium during a public hearing and vote on whether to close the Cornville school in June.

Photo by Jeff Pouland

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Members of the School Administrative District 54 board voted 707-265 to close the Cornville Elementary, effective June 30. The voting was weighted, meaning board members Norridgewock, Canaan, Cornville, Mercer, Skowhegan and Smithfield each had a vote based on the size of the town they represent.

The necessary two-thirds majority vote was 667.

After 90 minutes of pleas from Cornville parents, teachers and friends, the school board said the 1956 Cornville school was unprofitable and unnecessary in the shadow of $2.3 million in budget cuts facing the district, just to maintain "status quo" spending.

Outside the gymnasium at Skowhegan Middle School where Thursday's vote was taken, Kaylee McGowan, a fifth-grader from Cornville, cried.

"I won't be able to graduate," she said, her voice hitching. "I'm a fifth-grader. I was going to graduate from the school next year. Now I won't be able to."

Her father, Broc McGowan, was equally dismayed.

"I think it's money first and people second," he said. "It's a rite of passage, sixth-grade graduation. It's the end of one era to the next, and you like to do that rite of passage with your peers. Everyone's now going off in a different direction, heading into the unknown of the other towns, the other schools, so it's a big deal to the young ones."

The Cornville school serves 95 children in kindergarten through grade 6. Students next year will be moved to schools in Skowhegan, where Superintendent Brent Colbry said two classrooms will be opened to try to keep Cornville pupils together.

He said there is no overcrowding in Skowhegan.

Residents appealed to the board to keep Cornville's community together, citing growth in town and an increase in the number of families that have moved there because the town had a community school.

For their part, school board members appeared sympathetic to the fears of Cornville parents, but the estimated $600,000 needed to operate the school was too much to overlook. It was either cut the school or cut teachers, they said.

Residents stood one by one for 90 minutes to say there were other areas to cut -- starting with the administration -- but their arguments fell on deaf ears, Cornville First Selectman Melvin Blaisdell said.

"Those speeches were all prepared before this meeting ever started," he said of the comments by school board members. "Every director had their speech ready. They knew how they we're going to vote and we just wasted two hours. I watched every one of them."

Board member Maureen Provencal of Skowhegan said directors had to think of all of the children in the district, not just the Cornville students.

"It's not the school board's fault or the parents' fault," she said. "Most importantly, it's not the fault of the children."

Board Vice Chairman Patrick Elwell of Smithfield said he would vote to close the school because of the economy.

"We must make systematic changes," Elwell said. "This budget crunch is not temporary."

Mary Stuart, a sixth-grade teacher at Cornville, cried when she heard the vote result Thursday night.

"This has been traumatic for families," she said. "I think it's been pretty traumatic for the board. I expected the vote to be much closer. I'm heartbroken."

Cornville residents will get a chance to vote by referendum this summer to keep the building open as a school -- but at town expense, not district expense.

Doug Harlow -- 474-9534

dharlow@centralmaine.com