RICHMOND

Lauren Umberhind says to bring your signs and wear your school colors.

Umberhind, a Richmond High School senior, has organized a student-led march Friday that will wind through the Capitol from 9 to 11 a.m. in a bid to trigger discourse with legislators.

She invites students across the state — or anyone else who wants to voice their opinions on the issue of $40 million in proposed cuts to public education.

“I hear all of these concerns from all the other parents and adults … about all these cuts, and we’re trying to cut back even more just to save a little bit of extra money,” said Umberhind, a student representative on the Regional School Unit 2 school board.

She testified in March in front of the Appropriations Committee against public school funding cuts proposed by Gov. Paul LePage.

“I heard from a lot of people; I heard from a lot of superintendents, a lot of teachers, and there were even some students,” including a little girl in fifth grade asking her school’s budget not be cut.

“I was moved by that,” Umberhind said.

She felt she had to do something to “have students really become aware and show the Legislature, show the governor, that students really do care about their education, about their future.”

Umberhind told RSU 2 Superintendent Virgel Hammonds and the school board about her idea to organize a student-led protest, then started an event page on Facebook.

With more than 1,800 people invited as of Tuesday, 83 said they are coming.

She enlisted the help of friend Dylan Thombs, a Monmouth Academy junior who is helping spread the word and raise awareness about the protest.

They are inviting students from across the state, “anyone who wants to come and show that they do care and to put a face to the budget cuts,” Umberhind said, “so it’s not just a bunch of faceless kids.

“We are the people you will be (affecting) if you agree to the budget cuts.”

As a senior, “I won’t really be affected in the near future, but I have a little brother and sister … I just want them to have the best education that they can … I just want them to really push themselves and get accepted into the colleges they want to go to.”

Her mother, Lori Umberhind, also an RSU 2 school board member, said college preparedness may be lacking after cuts that have been made to this point.

“It all comes down to the finances, and that’s where our kids may be at a disadvantage to compete for those precious scholarships that are out there to pay for college.” Such scholarships are often linked to students being able to take the most rigorous courses possible.

Umberhind said she will attend the University of Maine to study nursing. But it has been challenging for her to juggle all the courses she needed to meet her graduation requirements while also achieving a quality education.

She drives to Hall-Dale High School to take a college-level English course, and to Monmouth Academy to take physics not offered this year at Richmond High School. Because it works better with her schedule, she also takes Advanced Placement statistics in Monmouth and is also taking three online classes.

“I really do like school and I like to learn and I want to challenge myself as much as possible; so taking what was available in Richmond already, I wanted to see what else I could do,” Umberhind said.

Richmond High School Principal Steve Lavoie said the difficulty is in being a small school of about 142 students with already limited resources:

“There are a lot of things we may offer every other year, and sometimes it just doesn’t fit with an individual’s program. So we do offer a bunch of (advanced courses) but not necessarily every year, and that can be restricting.”

One way to reach out and access more resources and programs is through technology. But there is a hefty cost associated with that, as well.

Umberhind worries cutting programs such as arts and athletics would make some students less willing to go to school, “because all the fun things that they really, really care about aren’t going to be there.”

From a principal’s perspective: “You end up having to focus on requirements and what we absolutely have to deliver in order to get kids ready to graduate and it makes other things vulnerable,” Lavoie said.

Thombs said Tuesday the protest is personal for him.

Having already seen a series of budget cuts and programs eliminated at Monmouth Academy, which is also in RSU 2, he said he doesn’t want to see the cuts continue at his or any other school.

He has two younger brothers and knows what it is like to go to a school going through change and being remolded.

Hammonds said RSU 2 faces as much as a $1.1 million to $1.3 million budget hole for 2013-14, including a more than $600,000 reduction in state subsidy; a $250,000 increase in benefits and a $339,000 teacher retirement cost shift; as well as other fixed cost increases.

No specific cuts have yet been discussed.

April “is really going to be a hard month when we have to make some of those calls,” Hammonds said.

But students seem energized by the challenge.

“I understand a group of students isn’t going to change the entire world, or the Legislature, by any means,” Thombs said, but as his crosscountry coach always tells him: “If you’re in a race with someone and you know they’re going to beat you, make sure they know they’re in a race too.”

“We’re not going to sit down and take this lightly and let this happen to our schools.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com

WHAT: Student school funding protest
WHERE: State House, 230 State St., Augusta
WHEN: 9 a.m. Friday, April 12, rain or shine

ON THE WEB

Find the student-led protest march on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ events/351605731607150