BRUNSWICK

The Region Ten Technical High School community is exploring whether to become a comprehensive school, a move that proponents say may better serve the needs of — and provide new opportunities to — students.

R10 staff as well as other school superintendents earlier this month engaged with the Maine’s commissioner of Education about the possibilities surrounding Region Ten’s political landscape, and the possibility of doing something new.

Brunswick School Superintendent Paul Perzanoski said the commissioner has been asked to provide information as to what would need to happen for R10 to become a Career and Technical

Education school, how such a CTE school would work as a charter school, what legislation would be required and what state funding might be expected.

“What we have to do is utilize what’s available to us,” Perzanoski said, referring to legislation surrounding the different school models provided for in state law.

R10 Interim Director Peter Dawson said it is exciting work, albiet in an exploratory stage.

Dawson said he wants “to focus on what we want our school to be able to offer.”

“If we keep focusing on that, we may see that there are different models that can accomplish that,” Dawson said.

The concept of a comprehensive high school is one that Perzanoski said he’s talked about for eight years. He believes it is getting traction and that staff at Region Ten “see the possibilities that are available to kids if we do this.”

A comprehensive high school could involve a new facility or could operate at the current Church Road facility, Perzanoski said.

Region Ten has been looking at a $10 million remodeling project for the last couple years.

Meanwhile, SAD 75 is planning a state-funded high school construction project that may include a new CTE program.

Dawson said R10’s own comprehensive school aspirations isn’t in opposition to SAD 75. Rather, the motivation is to take advantage of new opportunities by becoming “something special and new.”

Currently, students attend a half-day program at R10 and lose a lot of time spent in transportation to and from the school.

The comprehensive high school model would make Region Ten a school in its own right that offers academic programs and the vocational and career-oriented programs in the same building.

Students would be able to attend R10 for a full day and get all of their CTE program credits and academic program credits in the same school, instead of wasting what is the equivalent of a period going back and forth between schools.

As a comprehensive high school, the CTE and academic curriculums would be tied together. And integration doesn’t need to stop at a math class and vocational program, Dawson said.

“If we have a campus that is located not far from a community college campus and forward-looking industries involving a good deal of technology, all of a sudden you have a good deal of experiences kids can have,” Dawson said. That includes job shadowing to sharing a facility, staff or equipment with a community college or university.

Brunswick Landing’s developers see the possibility of a comprehensive school at the former Naval base as a very attractive combination to offer to prospective industries and businesses, Dawson said.

“We would have a feeding system of good students” who have a strong background in vocational and technical programs and industry experience, which is attractive to many industries.

A good example of this, Dawson said, is the group of students who took a sixweek composite course through SMCC last school year. Of 10 students, a number of them went on to study composites at SMCC which was not part of their plans, “but that program lit a fire and all of a sudden they knew that’s what they wanted to study.”

The school is moving toward a new leadership structure. That means replacing a director position supervised by the superintendents of the three school departments that send students to R10. In its place would be a superintendent director.

Schools aren’t known for trying to find ways to change, Dawson said, so it is exciting to be talking about new ideas.

“We will have to continue to develop our vision of what our school will look like and at the same time build some steps along the way,” Dawson said, such as looking at what the current facility can handle and building excitement from there.

dmoore@timesrecord.com

CURRENTLY, STUDENTS attend a half-day program at Region Ten and lose a lot of time spent in transportation to and from the school. The comprehensive high school model would make Region Ten a school in its own right that offers academic programs and the vocational and career-oriented programs in the same building.