Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

School for deaf to send more students to city

By Kelley Bouchard kbouchard@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

PORTLAND — The state-run Governor Baxter School for the Deaf plans to expand its collaboration with Portland public schools and move its students in grades 6 through 8 to Moore Middle School in the fall, according to school officials.

Baxter officials are looking to save money in the face of budget cuts and broaden mainstream educational opportunities for hearing-impaired students across Maine.

Located on Mackworth Island in Falmouth, just over the city line with Portland, the Baxter School transferred its nine remaining high school students to Portland High School in the fall of 2003, sending state-funded teachers and tuition money with them.

Since then, Baxter’s program at Portland High has doubled to 18 students from around the state. Four of five deaf students who graduated from Portland High last June went on to college.

“They are extremely pleased with what Portland High School is doing and they want to expand it to the middle school program,” said Jim Morse, Portland’s school superintendent. “With Portland’s experience with multilingual and special-needs students, the integration of the Baxter students has been seamless.”

Morse emphasized that absorbing Baxter’s six or so middle school students will cost Portland taxpayers nothing and could wind up saving state tax dollars in the long run.

The Baxter School is part of the Maine Educational Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, both located on Mackworth Island. The center, with a budget of $6.1 million this year, provides and oversees educational programs and parental support for more than 600 hearing-impaired young people from birth to age 21 across the state.

Under a memorandum of agreement, Portland schools will educate Baxter’s middle and high school students, while the Baxter School and the center will continue to offer preschool, elementary and after-school programs on the island and manage deaf-education programs across the state.

Baxter officials are looking for savings because the center’s budget for the school year starting July 1 must be reduced by $700,000 to $5.4 million, said Traci Drake, the center’s business manager.

This year’s budget includes $859,000 for teachers and tuition for deaf students who attend Portland High, Drake said. Baxter’s elementary and middle school programs are each serving six students at the island school this year.

The cost of the Portland High program includes $8,526 annual tuition for each deaf student and the salaries and benefits of five specially trained teachers, educational technicians, guidance counselors and interpreters. The latter will cost about $485,000 this year and consume a large portion of the Portland High program’s budget.

For middle and high school students whose families live far from Portland, Baxter also provides housing during the week at the Spurwink Services campus on Riverside Street in Portland, Drake said.

Deaf teenagers in Maine may choose to attend Baxter’s program at Portland High or their local high school. Educating deaf students individually in public schools can cost more than $100,000 per student, Baxter officials said in a recent cable television interview.

Baxter officials say expanding their programs in Portland schools will increase mainstream educational opportunities for deaf students and reduce costs by sharing resources and teachers trained in deaf education, who often must be recruited outside Maine.

Jay Bartner, Baxter’s consulting superintendent, and Lynn Schardel, Baxter’s executive director, explained their goals in a Dec. 17 letter to Morse.

“Our Portland High School program has proven to be cost-effective, mutually beneficial and has provided the framework for further collaboration,” they wrote. “Our goal is to provide cost savings to both of our organizations while at the same time creating new opportunities for the students that we serve.”

Among those new opportunities, school officials are talking about moving Baxter’s elementary students to a Portland elementary school, said Sarah Thompson, a Portland School Committee member.

They’re also talking about moving Portland’s day-treatment program from the former West Elementary School on Douglass Avenue to Baxter’s facilities on Mackworth Island, Thompson said.

Baxter’s aging middle school was replaced with a $2.3 million energy-efficient educational center in 2004 and now leases space to The Friends School, The REAL School and Hear Me Now.

The late Gov. Percival Baxter deeded the island to the state in 1957 for educational and recreational purposes.

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at kbouchard@pressherald.com