Maine news, sports, weather from Waterville Morning Sentinel

COMMUNITY COMPASS: Waterville High School would lose accreditation if renovations halted

Many of the online responses to the Aug. 22 article, “City officials disagree on Waterville High School renovations,” questioned the necessity of the renovations.

They can be summarized by this reader’s comment: “You can’t always get what you want, just because you want it. There’s nothing wrong with the way things are at the school. It works! Spending $10 million dollars on these ‘projects’ is absurd, and a waste of money.”

Unfortunately, the Morning Sentinel’s article omitted a key fact that would have made it clear that the renovation is not a luxury: Waterville Senior High School will lose its accreditation if it is not renovated. 

The high school is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which evaluates schools on seven standards. The high school is on warning status for one of those standards, community resources for learning. The warning status will not be removed until we “fund and implement the recommended renovation plan as presented by Oak Point Associates.”

Most schools that lose their accreditation do so because of a substandard physical plant, and if we delay or halt efforts toward completing this recommendation, the high school will be placed on probation, and its accreditation eventually will be terminated. This will be a very public process.

The warning, which has confidential status between the association and the school,  indicates the school is deficient in one or more of the standards. Unlike the warning, probation indicates that a school fails to meet one or more of the standards at an acceptable level, and is very public. Probation is published on the association’s website and in its membership roster, which is updated annually and distributed to all member institutions. 

The only real disadvantage in continuing the renovation is the cost, which given the current economy, is a large consideration.

Halting the renovation, however, has several disadvantages:

• The association will place Waterville Senior High School on probation and eventually will terminate its accreditation.

• The value of property in Waterville likely will decrease as a result of the schools loss of accreditation.

• The school’s lower status will have a negative impact on staff morale.

• Many in the community will lose confidence in the high school.

• The building will have to be renovated soon anyway and, until then, money will be spent to repair and replace failing systems. Labor likely will never be cheaper than it is now, and interest on the Qualified School Construction Bond likely will never be lower.

In fact, the repayment on a standard bond with a 4.5 percent interest rate for 30 years would be almost three times as much (more than $31 million) as that on the QSCB with 0.5 percent interest for 17 years (more than $11 million). Annual payments on the 30-year bond would be $50,000 more than payments on the QSCB bond. 

A decision to halt the renovation would place Waterville Senior High School among the 15 percent of Maine high schools that are not accredited. Although the citizens, through their school board, city council  and mayor, ultimately will make this decision, we believe it would be counterproductive to allow the high school to lose its accreditation when Waterville is trying to attract more people and businesses to the city. 



Donald J. Reiter is principal at Waterville Senior High School. Joyce Blakney is

president of the Waterville Teachers’ Association.

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