City and state health officials are trying to find out why 22 Reiche Elementary School students got sick an hour after eating lunch Tuesday.

Michael Russell, who oversees Portland’s health inspection program, said school officials alerted the city about the outbreak after 16 students began vomiting and six others complained about upset stomachs.

“It might not be anything to do with the food,” Russell said Friday. “The only question was the timing of it.”

One menu item in particular is under suspicion: a pickled beet salad.

Reiche was the only school to serve the beet salad Tuesday and there were no illnesses at other city schools.

“We focused on that,” Russell said. “The lab results are pending.”

No students required medical treatment and all but one returned to school the next day, according to the district, which declined to provide the ages of the students affected.

State and city health officials Wednesday inspected the school district’s central kitchen on Waldron Way and the kitchen at Reiche School.

The central kitchen, where all of the school lunches are prepared, passed the inspection with only two minor violations that were corrected on site, Russell said. However, the Reiche kitchen failed after inspectors observed four critical violations which can compromise food safety, he said.

The violations inspectors found included:

• The salad bar sneeze guard was too high for the students, who also were dropping tong and ladle handles into the food after using them.

• The self-serve salad bar was not being monitored.

• Cut salad greens and macaroni and cheese were left out without proper time and temperature control.

• The school was not sanitizing a key pad used by students to confirm they had picked up their lunches.

Reiche’s kitchen passed a routine city inspection in January with no violations. It also passed inspections in 2014 and 2010.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention is assisting in the investigation, spokesman John Martins said.

“There has been no determination that the onset was due to a food-borne concern and the investigation remains ongoing,” Martins said. “The onset of any illness can be attributed to a variety of different factors. It is often difficult to ascertain with 100 percent certainty the cause.”

BAFFLING SPEED

At least one expert was baffled by the speed with which the illness came and went.

Dr. Dora Anne Mills, a former state epidemiologist, said it typically takes six to 10 hours for a foodborne illness, including the Norovirus, to present symptoms. Chemicals or toxins can cause immediate illness, but Mills said those symptoms tend to last longer than a few hours.

Investigators should be able to trace the cause in this case because it was a school with a fixed population and limited amount of food served Tuesday, Mills said, adding that interviews with kids and staff could reveal common elements among those who got sick.

Russell commended school staff, who have been cooperating with the investigation.

The school district sent a letter home to parents Wednesday. School officials did not publicly acknowledge the illness until being contacted by a reporter Friday.

School officials Friday morning would not grant interviews about the outbreak, and required a reporter to submit a list of questions in writing. The district responded nearly three hours later with a statement that included a copy of the report from the January inspection the Reiche kitchen had passed. It did not distribute the failed report from Wednesday.

In the statement, Tina Veilleux, the school nurse coordinator for the Portland Public Schools, said that while gastrointestinal infections can circulate throughout the school, this case was unusual because of the sudden onset of symptoms and the number of students affected.

‘SHELL-SHOCKED’ CUSTODIANS

Leah Whalen, president of the Reiche Parent Teacher Organization, said her 7-year-old daughter, second-grader Sophie Kilbreth, was among the children who got sick.

Whalen said her daughter usually takes her own lunch to school, but was excited to try a new pickled salad of root vegetables, including beets, being offered Tuesday.

“She really enjoyed it up until the point it disagreed with her stomach an hour later,” Whalen said.

Her daughter felt better a few hours after getting sick and was able to eat dinner, she said.

Whalen said some Reiche parents are referring to the outbreak as “The Episode.” She hopes it doesn’t deter the school or students from trying new, healthier foods such as the beet salad.

“They’re really trying to encourage the kids to try new vegetables,” Whalen said. “I have no concerns about her eating there. I think it was an isolated incident.”

Whalen said school nurses and custodians, who were kept busy cleaning up after the kids, looked “shell-shocked” Tuesday when she picked up her daughter.

“I feel like I should bake some cookies for the custodial staff,” she said.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The woman’s voice on the intercom was anguished.

“There’s a shooter in the building. Lockdown! Lockdown!”

Inside the library at Independence’s Pioneer Ridge Middle School, about 65 teachers and staff members – who knew this was all pretend but were warned it may be unnerving – assumed their positions under desks and crouched between rows of children’s books.

Someone switched off the lights as instructed. Maybe the gunman won’t see them hiding. The rest of the school stood empty.

It was part of training increasingly occurring in the nation’s schools, hospitals and other workplaces to drive home lessons on how not to become an armed intruder’s sitting duck.

“Lockdown! Lockdown! He’s getting close to the library.”

Independence Police Sgt. Chris Summers entered with a steely expression and brisk gait. He carried an Airsoft pistol filled with plastic pellets. The lights came on and he weaved around the shelves, firing.

An officer following him sounded an air horn representing each shot.

“You’re shot,” Summers said, tapping the gun barrel against the thighs of three teachers huddled behind a table. No point pulling the trigger on them, close as they were.

Eliminating that huddle took three seconds.

The killer played by Summers had dozens of others to finish off, quickly as he could, to show the teachers what’s likely if they do nothing but try to hide.

Not all “active-shooter” drills simulate someone firing and people supposedly dying. But lessons are more apt to stick, police and security consultants say, when the real thing can be replicated without anyone getting hurt.

The ultimate point is to present human targets with options beyond the traditional response of locking doors, switching off lights and hoping the gunman doesn’t spot them.

How about dashing to exits, tossing objects, even overcoming the gunman?

“Things are moving in that direction,” said Paul Fennewald, director of the Center for Education Safety, a partnership of law enforcement agencies and the Missouri School Boards Association.

‘YOU NEED OPTIONS’

The thought of encountering an armed intruder and, as a last resort, fighting back “isn’t in the mindset of the education culture,” Fennewald said.

“But you look at where we are as a society now, you’ve got to get your mind around it. … You need options. You can’t just lay down in a fetal position and die.”

Some critics shudder at the basic tenets behind a fast-growing protocol called Run, Hide, Fight, especially as it applies to schools.

They contend that in some situations the lessons could result in more deaths than might occur in a basic lockdown.

That criticism is apart from the questions surrounding how some workplaces get the lessons across to their employees. In other areas of the country that have initiated high-tension drills, injuries have resulted and employees have complained that the role-playing is too much.

The Independence drill employed the principles of one of the more common training programs, known as ALICE.

Summers shot 90 percent of those library occupants. All fake deaths and injuries happened in less time than the five to six minutes it would take for police to arrive in a real emergency.

After the demonstration, the teachers and office workers rose amid nervous laughter, though some soon were dabbing at tears with tissue. That was while they listened to a 911 call from a terrified Columbine High School librarian during the 1999 assault that left more than a dozen dead.

In the next exercise, Pioneer Ridge educators learned to run down empty hallways to nearby exits.

Next, they used desks and chairs to barricade their classrooms. They were told that in a real-life event it’s OK to crawl out windows.

Next, they threw plastic balls and learned to physically swarm a gunman, separating gun from intruder and pinning that person to the floor. Nobody should be holding the gun when police arrive, they were told, because officers will be targeting the gunman.

The group applauded at the end of two hours of instruction and exercises. One employee shouted, “Empowered!”

Eventually, such lessons will be made age-appropriate and passed on to pupils, school officials said.

Here and across the nation, the strategies for survival are pitched under different names: Escape, evade, engage. Get out, hide out, take out. Flee, fade, fight.

But the idea is the same: Provide options, and the safest one may not be crouching in the dark.

‘UNCHARTED TERRITORY’

In December, a national report on drills simulating school shootings called the rising practice “uncharted territory” and urged districts to proceed cautiously, especially when youngsters are involved.

“We really don’t know the effect of these drills. We need to know that,” said Stephen Brock, president of the National Association of School Psychologists, which co-sponsored the report with the National Association of School Resource Officers.

Brock cited the rarity of kids being killed by gunmen at schools – “the odds are similar to being struck by lightning three times” – and said some districts may be reacting to intense media attention to the threat.

So far, though, official grievances have been few:

In Colorado, a nursing home worker filed suit after she stepped unaware into an active-gunman drill. Police conducting it allegedly ordered her into an empty room as a “hostage.” Realizing the worker was startled, an officer tried to explain that it was just a drill.

In Farmington, Mo., four teachers complained to the county prosecutor that the drills made them uncomfortable. No legal action was taken and the teachers reportedly resolved their issues with the district.

In Iowa, more than 25 school workers filed for workers’ compensation for injuries that they claim occurred in drills that taught how to wrestle down gunmen as a last resort, said Jerry Loghry of EMC Insurance Companies in Des Moines.

“We have injuries related to running, to tackling, being tackled, running into door jambs, jumping off furniture,” said Loghry, whose company insures most Iowa schools and 1,500 districts nationwide.

ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter or Evacuate. The program is based on concepts developed by police in Houston, Texas, after the Columbine killings. It’s now administered by a private company, the Ohio-based ALICE Training Institute.

“The last count I got, there are 1,700 police departments and 1,600 school districts on board,” said the institute’s founder, Greg Crane, a former Texas police officer.

ALICE instructors travel the country to host two-day seminars that train school officials, law enforcement, security consultants and private companies. The trainees become ALICE-certified and relay what they’ve learned to the places they work.

The C in ALICE – counter – raises concerns among some security experts: Should civilians be taking on a crazed intruder with a weapon? Without knowing an armed person’s intentions, should he be swarmed and tackled, risking lives?

TRAINING TAKES TIME

“Trying to teach all that in a two-hour, four-hour or even 16-hour program doesn’t do it,” said Michael Dorn, a former police officer who now directs Safe Havens International, a school safety organization.

Dorn said he received 80 hours of close-quarters combat training to join a police tactical squad, adding: “I found 80 hours to be inadequate to learn the skills needed when applied under stress.”

But it doesn’t take training to know how to throw a backpack, book or laptop at someone bent on murder, ALICE advocates say.

Heaving papers. Running in zigzags. Anything but freezing in fear might throw a gunman off script, said Alisa Pacer, emergency preparedness manager at Johnson County Community College, where ALICE training has been mandatory for all workers since 2012.

Instead of locking down all classrooms when an armed intruder comes on campus, JCCC’s protocol is to track the whereabouts of the intruder, through video cameras and text alerts, and keep classroom instructors updated. They’ll do what they deem necessary.

Barricade the door. Direct students to a safe exit. Swarm the killer if death is the only other possible outcome.

“I believe it’s all about options,” Pacer said. “Doing nothing gets people killed.”

That was the takeaway for Pioneer Ridge staffers who drilled in Independence.

Courtney Wall, a health care worker at the school, said the most disturbing exercise was the first one, when Summers showed how quickly a gunman could attack a library full of people trying to hide.

“The hardest part,” she said, “was being a sitting duck.”

The University of Maine System board of trustees is keeping its options open when it comes to figuring out what to do with seven buildings on the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus that are known as the “white houses.”

The board had been scheduled to vote Monday on whether to authorize the sale of the buildings, but USM President David Flanagan told trustees Sunday that they should consider holding on to the land while either selling or leasing the buildings.

“Notwithstanding the current (financial situation), I believe that USM will one day be one of the most attractive and appealing campuses on the East Coast,” Flanagan said at a meeting of the trustees at the University of Maine in Orono. “The day may come, within the terms of some of you here on the board, where we will want to think about expanding housing on the Portland campus.”

The buildings, all single-family residential homes, are currently used as offices for some faculty and staff, including the marketing and human resources department. One property houses the economics department, with offices for two faculty members, an administrative assistant and visiting faculty.

Flanagan also pointed out that the system does not have a comprehensive master plan for facilities, and such a plan should be considered before selling off key property.

“There is so much potential, if we had the demand,” Flanagan said of the USM properties.

USM economics professor Susan Feiner had criticized the idea of selling the buildings for the same reason, when the idea was first discussed two weeks ago.

Flanagan also pointed out that if the properties are sold outright, the university would lose control over what companies moved in.

“These … streets are immediately adjacent to campus,” he said. “You can imagine the kind of businesses that would want to go in, and (some) that would not be consistent” with the university mission or image.

While Portland zoning rules would govern any development, controlling the decision would be out of campus officials’ hands.

Board of trustees Chairman Samuel Collins directed staff to redraft the language of the USM property motion to include exploring the option of keeping the land while selling or leasing the buildings. The trustees will vote on the new motion Monday on the second day of their two-day monthly meeting.

Flanagan emphasized that he still plans to vacate the buildings and does not want to use them for USM.

“They are energy hogs, they are costly maintenance black holes, and they tend to create a silo mentality as different departments are isolated from one another in different structures,” he said. Employees in the buildings will be moved onto campus by fall, officials have said.

The proposed sale was part of a request from system facilities officials that all seven campuses consider ways to reduce their facility costs or reduce their campus footprint.

On Monday, the trustees will vote on whether to authorize several property sales, including system headquarters at 16 Central St. in Bangor. Also on the list is a University of Maine property of about 30 acres of undeveloped land with road frontage on Stillwater Avenue in Old Town, and Kimball Hall on the University of Maine at Machias campus, which houses faculty offices and a small dining area.

At USM, the seven buildings in question are only some of the USM-owned residential homes in the neighborhood. The school also owns a row of homes on Bedford Street facing the campus, and a row of seven homes on Exeter Street behind the University of Maine School of Law.

Five of the seven properties are in a row at 1, 7, 11, 15 and 19 Chamberlain Ave. The other properties are at 209 Deering Ave. and 11 Granite St.

They have not been appraised, but university officials estimated they would sell for a total of between $1.2 million and $1.4 million, based on a report recently prepared by Planning Decisions of Hallowell. Officials estimated USM could save about $300,000 annually in overhead costs.

WASHINGTON — Their reputations sullied by race-tainted incidents, many colleges are clamping down on campus fraternities. Despite some swift and tough actions by schools, episodes such as the racist chants by members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter at the University of Oklahoma keep surfacing.

In recent years, numerous other fraternities have been suspended and students expelled from school for racially tinged parties or behavior, such as hanging nooses or shouting racial profanities.

“All too often the outcry has been, ‘Look at those bad apples we need to root out,'” said Nolan L. Cabrera, a professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. “When in fact the conversation we need to have is, ‘Why is this occurring on such a widespread level throughout the country?'”

Many incidents come to light after the students themselves post pictures or videos online, drawing public attention; others are reported by onlookers or whistleblowers.

‘OFFENSIVE, DISGUSTING’

Either way, “it’s hard to ignore a current on many, many campuses of behaviors that are just offensive and disgusting at the far end and maybe just lack common sense at the other end,” said Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, a professional organization.

• Sigma Alpha Epsilon suspended all activity at Clemson University in South Carolina in December after white students dressed as gang members at a “Cripmas” party.

• That same month, Phi Delta Theta halted its chapter at the University of Pennsylvania for issuing a holiday card with members posing with what it called a Beyonce sex doll.

• Arizona State University banned Tau Kappa Epsilon last year after its Martin Luther King Jr. Day party had guests flashing gang signs and holding watermelon-shaped cups.

• Kappa Sigma suspended its Duke University chapter in 2013 after students held an international-themed party that mocked Asians.

• Sigma Phi Epsilon shut its doors last year at the University of Mississippi after three of its members draped a Confederate banner and placed a noose around the statue of the school’s first black student.

• Lehigh University suspended Sigma Chi in April 2014 and expelled members after racial slurs were spray-painted and eggs thrown at a multicultural residence hall.

Sororities have had similar problems. In 2014, Chi Omega closed its Penn State chapter in connection with a photo appearing on the Internet showing members wearing sombreros and fake mustaches and holding offensive signs. One read: “Will mow lawn for weed + beer.”

The University of Alabama announced in fall 2013 that more than 20 minority women were being offered membership in historically all-white sororities after accusations surfaced of black women being denied membership.

At Oklahoma, the university quickly expelled two students and banned Sigma Alpha Epsilon last week after fraternity members were filmed engaging in a racist chant that referenced lynching and indicated that black students never would be admitted to that university’s chapter. Two students identified in the video have apologized publicly.

The national fraternity condemned the incident and started investigating racism allegations at universities in Louisiana and Texas after hearing that young men at two schools sang or knew of the same racist chant.

But the damage was done. The school’s president, former Sen. David Boren, D-Okla., said the fraternity “won’t be back – at least not as long as I’m president of the university.”

Fraternities, both historically white and those mostly made up of minorities, long have been a fixture of university life. Defenders point to the system’s charitable works and social and professional benefits for members.

Research by Nella Van Dyke, a professor at University of California, Merced, found that ethnic and racially biased hate crimes are more likely to be reported at predominantly white campuses and those with a large fraternity population. She said the problems are not everywhere, but they do exist.

BEYOND RACISM

Beyond racism, fraternities in recent years had to confront issues of sexual assault, binge drinking and hazing among their members. “I think many fraternities have a culture that makes them prone to conflict and kind of bigoted interactions, whether it’s against women or against minorities,” Van Dyke said.

Matthew Hughey, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut who studies racial identity, estimated that about 3 percent or 4 percent of the members of the majority-white fraternities and sororities are nonwhite. “We shouldn’t be surprised when unequal and segregated organizations say racist things. Of course they do,” he said.

The national fraternities are working to eliminate this kind of behavior and to train members to speak up instead of being pressured to conform, said Peter Smithhisler, president and chief executive officer of the North-American Interfraternity Conference.

“It’s about the constant re-education of our membership,” Smithhisler said. “And we have to be diligent in addressing our community members, sharing with them our expectations, teaching them about our values and acceptable behaviors and holding individuals accountable when they stray from that.”

Fraternities have about 372,000 members among 7.7 million male undergraduate college students, according to the North-American Interfraternity Conference.

ORONO – The University of Maine System trustees voted Monday to freeze tuition for a fourth straight year, pending approval of the governor’s proposed 1.7 percent increase in state funding.

“I’m very pleased that we’re able to hold tuition flat,” board chairman Sam Collins said after the trustees met at the University of Maine campus. “It has been a priority of all the trustees to make tuition affordable in Maine.”

The move keeps tuition and the mandatory fees at Orono, the system’s flagship campus, at $10,606, and makes the UMaine system something of an outlier nationally. In the last five years, Maine is the only state where tuition, adjusted for inflation, hasn’t increased, according to the College Board. The next lowest increase was 3 percent at Montana. Nationwide, in-state tuition has increased 17 percent over the same period at public four-year institutions, according to the board’s figures.

Rebecca Wyke, the system’s vice chancellor of finance and administration, said the governor’s budget, which increases state funding for the system for the first time in three years, made the freeze possible.

The governor’s proposed budget, which is being debated in Augusta, would increase state funding for the system by 1.7 percent, to $179.2 million, for the fiscal year ending June 2016; and by 1.93 percent, to $182.6 million, for the following fiscal year. That’s about half of what the system requested.

“Thank you so much,” UMaine junior Connor Scott told the trustees after the vote, noting that he and five of his siblings all attend system schools. “This is definitely a step in the right direction.”

UMaine Farmington sophomore Jamie Austin, 19, said the tuition freeze is critical for her.

“It means I can keep going,” said Austin, who is studying political science. She already gets some financial aid and does work-study, but has had to take out student loans to pay for her education.

Paying for college is “definitely challenging,” said Austin, who expects to graduate with about $25,000 in student loan debt. The average Maine college graduate has $30,000 in student debt, according to The Project on Student Debt.

Before the tuition freeze, the system had several years of annual tuition increases.

UMaine tuition remains higher than the national average of $9,139 annually. At Orono, in-state tuition and fees have increased from $6,394 in 2005 to $10,606 today. Tuition and fees at the University of Southern Maine are $8,540 a year.

At the current price, tuition and fees alone make up about 18 percent of Maine’s median household income of $50,487, officials said.

“It’s becoming almost a mortgage payment,” Trustees Shawn Moody said of tuition. “It’s tough (to freeze tuition), but it’s absolutely worthwhile. We have to do it.”

Whether the freeze could continue in future years depends on many budget factors, including the state appropriation, system spokesman Dan Demeritt said.

“When the day comes that tuition goes up, the trustees are committed to tying it to inflation,” he said. “We don’t want it to grow faster than Mainers’ ability to pay.”

The decision to freeze tuition means the trustees plan to take $9 million from emergency reserves to balance the system’s $519 million budget for the fiscal year beginning in July.

The trustees will take a final vote on the budget and the tuition at their May 17-18 meeting.

Last year’s $529 million system budget required using $11.4 million in emergency funds and cutting 157 positions.

Officials say the years of ongoing budget deficits have been the result of flat state funding, declining enrollment and three years of tuition freezes.

According to the proposed budget, $2.6 million in emergency and reserve funds would go to UMaine Presque Isle; $1.5 million to UMaine Fort Kent; $1.5 million to USM; $1.3 million to UMaine Machias; $1 million to the system office; and $561,000 to UMaine Farmington.

UMaine Augusta and Orono do not have deficits.

Aside from state allocations, tuition is the system’s other major source of revenue.

The emergency funds would come from reserves and a budget stabilization fund created in 2010 for the purpose of offsetting operating shortfalls at the campuses. Last year was the first time the budget stabilization funds were used.

Also Monday, the trustees approved a plan to sell multiple properties around the system, including system headquarters at 16 Central St. in Bangor. Also approved for sale was a University of Maine property of about 30 acres of undeveloped land with road frontage on Stillwater Avenue in Old Town, and Kimball Hall on the University of Maine at Machias campus, which houses faculty offices and a small dining area.

The trustees also approved a plan for USM to explore the possible sale or lease of several single-family residences known as the “white houses.” The board had been scheduled to vote Monday on whether to authorize the sale of the buildings, but outgoing USM President David Flanagan told trustees Sunday that they should consider holding on to the land while either selling or leasing the buildings.

Also Monday, system officials reported that spring 2015 enrollment systemwide was 27,231 students, down 3 percent from last year at this time, and down 9.5 percent over the last five years.

Nancie Atwell said if it appeared as though she was poised and prepared Sunday when she accepted the first-ever Global Teacher Prize – and its $1 million prize – at a ceremony in Dubai, it wasn’t because she knew she would win.

“They asked all of (the 10 finalists) to write acceptance speeches,” she said Monday in a telephone interview. “I had no idea. It was a genuine surprise.”

Atwell, a longtime educator and author from midcoast Maine, returned Monday from a whirlwind weekend with some extra luggage. The Global Teacher Prize, sponsored by the Varkey Foundation, the largest operator of private elementary and secondary schools in the world, already has been called the Nobel Prize for teaching and Atwell is its first winner.

The $1 million award is paid out in installments over 10 years.

“It is validating, but it’s also important in terms of representing not just my work but the work of a whole profession,” she said.

Atwell, 63, already was a renowned teacher and author when she founded the Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb in 1990.

The private K-8 school is unique in that students are not the only ones who go there to learn. Every year, 40-50 teachers from across the world visit as “interns” to learn about teaching practices from Atwell, who espouses the power and value of reading.

Atwell and her colleagues at the Center for Teaching and Learning have graduated hundreds of students since the school was founded.

It was one of those students who nominated Atwell for the Global Teacher Prize. She still doesn’t know who it was and doesn’t necessarily want to know.

“It’s so nice to think that there was someone out there who wanted to do that,” she said.

Atwell was among 5,000 educators who were initially nominated for the award. She was named one of 50 finalists in January and made the top 10 in February.

News of the win has earned her universal praise.

“Anyone who ever spent a day at the Center for Teaching and Learning has seen how dedicated Nancie Atwell is to her students, to other educations and to the teaching profession,” U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said in a statement. “Now the whole world knows.”

“Nancie has dedicated her life to enriching the lives of others, and this international recognition is a reflection of the tremendous impact she has had in Maine and around the world,” added U.S. sens. Susan Collins and Angus King in a joint statement.

Atwell said she plans to stay true to her promise about donating every penny of the prize money back to the Center for Teaching and Learning.

“I have everything I could want,” she said.

She was still jet-lagged early Monday afternoon from a 13-hour flight but said what she wants most is to get back to her school.

“That’s the place where I’m happiest,” she said.

Staff Writer Eric Russell can be contacted at 791-6344 or:

erussell@pressherald.com

Twitter: @PPHEricRussell

Baxter Academy for Technology and Science is making a big splash in New England robotics competitions in its rookie season.

The Portland charter school’s team, known as The Outliers, is now one of the top-ranked teams in the state, after a competition in Lewiston over the weekend.

Robotics competitions involve teams of students who build remote-controlled robots to complete specified tasks, such as stacking storage bins. The teams compete for speed and design, among other things.

Baxter and Brewer High School’s team, Orange Chaos, came out of the weekend competition with the highest rankings. South Portland’s team, The Riot Crew, and the Bonny Eagle High School team, B.E.R.T., both of which are perennial contenders, also were among the top teams in Maine.

Baxter Academy’s team earned a place in the New England regional tournament to be held April 9-11 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Its success is especially unusual for a first-year team, and it won the Rookie All-Star Award.

Portland’s public schools “are in good shape and getting better all the time,” and Portland is still committed to becoming the best urban school district in the country by 2017, said Sarah Thompson, chair of the Portland Board of Public Education, during her State of the Schools address Monday.

Thompson said in her address to the City Council that the district continues to plan for facilities upgrades, which have been studied over the years. The biggest challenge is rebuilding Hall Elementary School, which is lined up for state funding after being damaged by a fire in 2012.

She also said the district is planning for curriculum changes, as the state is moving toward the Common Core.

“We are also increasing learning time,” she said.

She said the school budget proposed for 2015-16 is “austere and modest,” especially in light of uncertainty surrounding the state budget process.

Thompson said the city’s District Scorecard, developed by Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk, is one example of how the district is accountable and transparent.

While the District Scorecard highlights positive results for fifth-grade reading and 11th-grade math and an increase in SAT scores, she said, third-graders who are black or economically disadvantaged trailed other groups.

“That’s important to know because third-grade reading ability is a key indicator of future academic success,” Thompson said.

She noted that 26 percent of parents responded to a survey that was offered in English and seven other languages. Over 90 percent of those parents indicated that they felt the schools were safe and they felt respected.

Thompson also highlighted awards and certifications earned by the staff, and other initiatives, including the principal for a day program, which puts business leaders in public schools; and expanding science and math education.

“Even with competition from charter schools, our schools offer the best opportunity for robust learning in science and math,” she said.

Thompson also noted the standardized-testing success of students at Presumpscot Elementary School, which has a “high percentage of students living in poverty.”

Portland school officials are rethinking their plans for replacing Hall Elementary School after learning there would be fewer students in the district than expected in future years and that the state might pay for a bigger project if Longfellow School were included in the plan.

Until now, the district was moving ahead with a $20 million state-funded plan to replace Hall on its current site on Orono Road off outer Brighton Avenue. But with fewer students, the state will only pay for a smaller school than Portland planned.

The original plan was to build a new two-story building that doubled the 54,000 square feet of the current building. Based on new demographic data, however, the state would pay only for a replacement of the 54,000 square feet.

Every few years, the Maine Department of Education seeks applications for state funding, evaluates proposals based on need, and issues a priority list that is the basis of capital improvement funding decisions for the next few years. Seventy-one projects made the list in 2011, and that list was later winnowed down to a smaller group of approved projects.

Hall is one of 12 school projects on the state’s approved list, and is at the beginning of a years-long, 21-step process to be built.

The current discussion does not derail that process, but likely means a delay.

The proposed opening for the Hall school replacement had been September 2018.

Another major factor, according to City Councilor Ed Suslovic, who is also chairman of the Hall School Building Committee, is how much money the city has for major capital improvement projects over the next 10 years.

That’s because the city had planned to use local funds to renovate Longfellow and three other elementary schools: Reiche, Lyseth and Presumpscot. But recent reports indicate the city does not have enough money for the city’s overall “needs list,” which includes those elementary school projects, Suslovic said.

“We’ve got some tough issues to face,” Suslovic told the school board Tuesday night at a workshop following its regular meeting, held at Lyman Moore Middle School.

School board chairwoman Sarah Thompson said the board and City Council would need to meet to discuss finances, then come up with various scenarios to present to the community before moving forward on the Hall School project.

If the city decides to stay with the plan to just replace Hall, it means local taxpayers would have to pay for Longfellow. If they combine the schools, the state would pay for the new school, Thompson said.

“They’re not saying we have to do this, but the state is saying they would pay for a new school if we do both,” said Thompson. “That’s the dilemma.”

The state money would pay for a basic school design, and local funds would be required for additional items. Officials had hoped to put the funding question to voters this fall, asking whether they want to accept the state funds and, in another question, whether they approve of local spending for additional elements that may be desired.

That November vote is now likely to be delayed, Suslovic said.

Portland used state funding to build the East End Community School in 2006 and Ocean Avenue Elementary School in 2011.

Cheverus High School has hired a former teacher and Boston native to be its 19th president.

The Rev. George E. Collins, who now is the director of campus ministry at Fairfield University in Connecticut, was chosen to lead the Catholic high school in Portland effective July 1.

Collins will replace the Rev. William R. Campbell, who is leaving Cheverus to serve as vice president for mission at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

The announcement was made Thursday in a statement released by Richard Peterson, chairman of Cheverus’ Board of Trustees. “Father Collins is an inspired choice as our next leader,” Peterson said in the statement. “He is no stranger to Cheverus. As a well-respected Theology instructor at Cheverus from 2005 to 2007, Father Collins made a deep and lasting impression on his students in guiding them as St. Ignatius Loyola did in ‘finding God in all things.'”

Collins was chosen after a national search, in which the search committee considered lay and Jesuit candidates.

Peterson said Collins rose to the top as a leader who embodies the Jesuit values upon which Cheverus was built and has a commitment to a rigorous secondary liberal arts education, Peterson said.

Collins comes from a family of nine children and has a business background. He received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Boston College before going to work for Boston Edison Co. He retired from Boston Edison in 1998 as a process/planning supervisor and returned to Boston College, where he earned a master’s degree in pastoral ministry in 2000 – the year he entered the Society of Jesuits.

Cheverus, founded in 1917, is an independent, co-educational college preparatory school overseen by the Jesuits. More than 450 students attend.

Three South Portland High School students asked the faculty leadership team Thursday to adopt a written policy making it clear that participation in the Pledge of Allegiance is optional under the law.

Senior class President Lily SanGiovanni upset some faculty and community members in January when she added “if you’d like to” to her daily intercom invitation to say the pledge. SanGiovanni, backed by friends Gaby Ferrell and Morrigan Turner, were concerned that they and other students had felt pressured or compelled by teachers to participate in the morning ritual.

The girls delivered a formal presentation Thursday afternoon before the 12-member leadership team – the same panel that rejected a similar proposal from the girls last fall. All three are top students who are heading to competitive colleges after graduation. The girls made a 15-minute presentation, answered a few questions, then left the teachers to deliberate.

“Overall, I think it was a good meeting,” SanGiovanni said Thursday evening. “One of the teachers sent me an email afterward. He said there was some lively discussion, whatever that means.”

The high school currently has no written policy for how reciting the pledge should be handled each day.

The girls experienced a strong local backlash on social media after SanGiovanni altered her morning invitation slightly, saying “would you please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance, if you’d like to.” SanGiovanni dropped the four added words at the principal’s request. News of the girls’ thwarted effort drew a national firestorm of opposition and support.

The written policy that the girls proposed Thursday calls for the person who leads the pledge to say this: “Good morning, I now invite you to rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

The girls decided to drop “if you’d like to” in favor of more neutral language that still tells students they are being invited – not ordered – to participate, SanGiovanni said.

The proposed policy goes on to stipulate that “all staff and students are expected to remain quiet and respectful for the duration of the recitation of the pledge.”

It also says that “a student may not be compelled by any staff member to participate in the pledge in any way that the student does not wish to, regardless of a staff member’s individual beliefs about the pledge.”

Participation is defined to include standing, placing a hand over the heart, reciting the pledge or any other action.

The girls have asked that the proposed policy be posted in the principal’s office and that the school community be reminded of the policy at the start of each school year. SanGiovanni said 86 students had signed an online petition supporting the proposal.

She said it’s unclear when the leadership team will vote on the proposal, though she expects its members to discuss the matter with faculty members in coming weeks.

Even if the leadership team rejects the girls’ latest proposal, SanGiovanni said, Principal Ryan Caron told the girls that he would incorporate educational information about the pledge into back-to-school activities so faculty and students know that participation is optional under state and federal law.

“Hopefully, the wording will be approved,” SanGiovanni said.

Despite a $1 million ad campaign that was launched in February to boost enrollment, the number of undergraduates applying to the University of Southern Maine is down 10 percent from last year at this time.

“Obviously you wish the numbers were a little better, but we’re showing improvements,” noted incoming President Harvey Kesselman, who said the university is narrowing the gap between last year’s applications and this year’s as the ad campaign progresses.

Both the ads and $1 million in extra scholarship money are one-time efforts that are being paid for with money saved through faculty layoffs and retirements, according to USM spokesman Chris Quint.

Currently, undergraduate applications at the school are down 10 percent, with 3,809 applications compared to 4,249 last year, according to data collected as of Monday. Admissions are down 12 percent and new enrollment for 2015 is down 41 percent compared to last year.

Graduate student applications and admissions are both down 10 percent, but enrollment is up 4 percent, to 49 students from 47, according to the report.

USM economics professor Susan Feiner, who has sharply criticized recent cuts made in USM’s faculty, said that while the school clearly needs to recruit more students, those students care about academic quality as much as their pocketbooks.

“(If the) administration believes they can simultaneously gut the academic programs and get more students to attend, (that) is magical thinking,” Feiner wrote in an email Thursday.

LOWER ENROLLMENT EXPECTED THIS YEAR

USM saved $4 million in salary costs by eliminating 51 faculty positions halfway through the year, officials said.

Of that, $1 million is being offered as one-time scholarship money, and the other $1 million is being used for the ads on television, radio, Hulu and various online sites.

Normally, USM spends $400,000 a year on marketing, which is largely spent online, with Google banner ads and social media, Quint said.

USM has been rocked in recent years by a series of financial shortfalls, student and faculty protests over cuts and a string of temporary presidents. Officials have pointed to declining enrollment as a major factor in their budget woes.

Last fall, interim USM President David Flanagan cut five academic programs and eliminated the 51 faculty positions to help close a $16 million budget gap. Even with those cuts, Flanagan plans to use $1.6 million in campus reserves to balance USM’s $127 million budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Kesselman starts at USM on July 1.

At this week’s system board of trustees meeting, Flanagan noted the new ad campaign, but downplayed the potential impact.

“In reality, we expect (enrollment) to be down despite the advertising and scholarship money,” he said Monday.

USM’s fall 2014 enrollment was down 5.5 percent over the previous year, to 8,428 students. That’s a 13 percent drop since fall 2010.

The ad campaign was built to highlight the new scholarship money, and intended for the higher-profile television and radio markets. The ads themselves are spare and simple, with no photography or people, just large block letters in blue and gold and a tagline saying, “USM: Find yourself here.”

“We have to get our enrollment up. That is priority number one,” Quint said.

Kesselman didn’t expect enrollment to be up this coming fall, but thought it would start trending upward by fall 2016.

“I’m comfortable that we’re going to have some upticks,” he said Thursday. He said applications were down by a bigger percentage a few weeks ago, so the gap has narrowed as the ad campaign has progressed.

The school also plans to have faculty and alumni make calls to students, fill a vacant enrollment management position and send letters to prospective students.

“We’re going to work hard,” Kesselman said.

Quint said officials came up with the idea for the new scholarships and ad campaign in early January and rolled it out by mid-February. The ad campaign will wrap up by next week.

“We flooded the market,” he said. The school targeted the first few months of the year because “that’s when a large chunk of students are making decisions on where to enroll.”

NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS TARGETED

USM recommends students apply for admission by the priority filing deadline of Feb. 15. Different scholarships have different deadlines, from a Feb. 15 deadline for students applying for academic scholarships, to April 1 for merit scholarships. Applications will continue to be accepted after that date.

Quint said university officials will have a better idea of the impact of the ad campaign after the April 1 deadline.

The whole UMaine system has seen enrollments decline for years, which officials say is mostly a result of the shrinking number of Maine high school graduates.

Colleges nationwide are struggling to meet enrollment targets, as national high school graduation rates have plateaued, according to the Education Advisory Board, a publicly traded Washington, D.C.-based education consultancy firm.

Colin Koproske, a senior consultant for the company, said 59 percent of public colleges missed their enrollment targets in 2013-14, according to their data. Many of them turn to companies like the Education Advisory Board to help with enrollment management.

“Aside from the most well-known universities, it has become much harder for colleges to enroll students qualified for their institutions without external support,” Koproske said in an email.

To counter that trend, all seven campuses in the University of Maine System are beefing up recruiting efforts and targeting more nontraditional, transfer, adult and out-of-state students.

USM has seen an increase in inquiries and hits on its website since the campaign started, Quint said.

Analytic data from Facebook, for example, showed that last year only about one in 10 people viewed more USM webpages after clicking on a USM ad targeting undergraduates; this year, about three in 10 are viewing more than one page of the USM site. The numbers are even higher, Quint said, for ads targeting graduate and transfer students.

The new $1 million in scholarship money is being added to the $23.5 million in scholarship funds currently available at USM.

This article was updated at 9:36 a.m. on Friday, March 20, 2015 to clarify information about the Education Advisory Board.

EDGECOMB — A rocking chair, not a podium, was placed in front of a crowd of students, parents and alumni who welcomed Nancie Atwell back to the Center for Teaching and Learning after she won the first Global Teacher Prize – and the $1 million that came with it – in Dubai on Sunday.

The school’s gymnasium, called the “Barn,” was set up with rows of pillows for student seating Friday, conveying the atmosphere of the school’s reading room rather than that of a news conference.

“I was so homesick for you guys,” Atwell said.

Students cheered and jumped up from their pillows to hug Atwell. After students showered her with spring daffodils and tulips, the educator described her experiences in Dubai and the whirlwind she had been on since winning the prize and returning to Maine on Monday.

“Dubai is so beautiful, but it’s not beautiful like Maine. It’s like Venus,” Atwell told the group, which included nearly 50 alumni and parents. Atwell showed seashells she collected while wading in the Persian Gulf and planned to give to a student with a seashell collection.

U.S. Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins each sent a representative to congratulate Atwell, as did Heinemann Publishing, which awarded the school’s library a $1,000 gift card for children’s and young adult books.

Atwell, who founded the private, nonprofit K-8 Center for Teaching and Learning in 1990, said only five people on the selection committee knew she had won the award before the ceremony, and had taken to referring to educators by code names to avoid accidentally revealing the winner prematurely. Her code name was initially “Bob,” but the committee later took to calling Atwell “Dumbledore,” after Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of the fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter books.

“‘You’re kind of a smart old scoundrel like he is,'” Atwell said a committee member told her.

The award is given by the Varkey GEMS Foundation, a philanthropic arm of Global Education Management Systems, which operates private K-12 schools around the world. The award is given to a teacher who is judged on “how they open up their pupils’ minds, how much they contribute to the community, and how much they encourage others to become teachers,” according to the Varkey website.

Atwell beat out 5,000 nominees from 26 countries for the prize given to “one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession,” according to the website.

The 5,000 nominees were winnowed in December to a group of 50 educators from which 10 finalists were chosen in February and invited to Dubai for Sunday’s ceremony.

The award was presented by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai. Former President Bill Clinton, honorary chairman of the Varkey Foundation, also was there.

Atwell doesn’t know who nominated her, only that it was a former student.

Atwell’s focus on reading and writing in the school’s curriculum is partly what prompted her nomination. Alum Lilly Richardson, now a high school junior at Erskine Academy in South China, believes Atwell’s philosophy of allowing students to choose their own books to read, rather than requiring every student to read the same literature, created a hunger for reading that she didn’t have before she attended the school. Richardson said Atwell and the Center for Teaching and Learning influenced her career trajectory.

“Teaching is something I’m considering,” she said. “Not until I came here and saw the teachers demonstrating that it could be a fun job did I ever think it would be something I’d enjoy.”

Parents said they, too, see a difference in the school’s approach compared to traditional public and private schools. Dolores Carbonneau said she chose the school for her daughter, Sophia, in part because of Atwell’s emphasis on critical thinking.

“She doesn’t fit everyone into the same mold, she’s a fantastic innovator against the modern trend of No Child Left Behind, and national standardized testing,” Carbonneau said.

Atwell said she will disburse the $1 million prize in $100,000 installments to the school over 10 years. The funds are likely to help pay for a new roof, carpeting, heaters and other facility improvements. Atwell said the center has no plans to expand the school beyond the 80 students currently enrolled, to ensure that the close student-teacher relationships are maintained.

“And no, there will be no pool,” Atwell joked with the students.

The Legislature’s Education Committee voted Monday to recommend adding more money to the governor’s $1.9 billion K-12 education budget.

The committee split on its recommendation, with Republican Sen. Peter Edgecomb of Caribou joining the panel’s Democrats in an 8-5 vote to increase funding by $51 million in each year. The other Republicans on the committee issued a minority report recommending an additional $25 million for both years of the budget.

Lawmakers said they wanted to get state education funding closer to the voter-approved mandate of 55 percent. The committee’s recommendation will be taken up by the Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

Late last week, the committee recommended adding $6 million over two years to the $55 million budget for the Maine Community College System, which had been flat-funded by Gov. Paul LePage. System officials told the committee that they would need to find $10 million in cuts if their funding wasn’t increased.

State officials are working on a plan to offer interest-free loans to students who study science or technology at a Maine college and go on to work in a related job in the state.

The Finance Authority of Maine loans would be offered to any college student who studies in a STEM field – science, technology, engineering or mathematics, officials said Monday.

FAME is working with Gov. Paul LePage’s office on the legislation and could introduce it in the coming weeks, said FAME spokesman Bill Norbert.

“It’s a work in progress,” Norbert said. “The whole idea is to try and get students to study these fields and to work in Maine industries in those fields. In return, they would have some of their loans paid off.”

Maine’s need for STEM workers is expected to rise sharply in the coming years, according to a Dec. 23 report released by the state Department of Labor. The number of science- and technology-related jobs is expected to increase 6.5 percent from 2012 to 2022, nearly three times the rate for all occupations, it said. The expected gain of 6,800 jobs in STEM occupations would account for 46 percent of expected net job growth.

STEM jobs make up 11.8 percent of all employment in Maine, placing the state 31st in the nation, said Robert Clifford, senior policy analyst for the Boston Fed’s New England Public Policy Center.

The details have yet to be worked out, but the proposed bill would provide zero-interest loans, capped at $7,500 a year and $30,000 over four years, roughly the same amount as the average student loan debt carried by Maine graduates.

Norbert said officials also were working out how the loan repayment would work if a student dropped out, or graduated and either couldn’t find a STEM job or left the state. He said they were evaluating a tiered interest plan, with students having to pay back the loan at a lower rate if they graduated but couldn’t find a job, and a higher interest rate for a graduate who left Maine.

The proposal is a sign of the importance of STEM careers in Maine, said Jay Collier, director of the Project Login program at the advocacy group Educate Maine. Project Login is focused on workforce development in the computer science and information technology fields.

“We are very happy to have any opportunity to encourage students to study in these fields and go into these fields,” Collier said. “Businesses are very anxious to have talent come their way.”

The loan program would be open to both in-state and out-of-state students, who pay about three times the amount as in-state students at the state universities. In-state tuition and fees at the University of Maine in Orono total $10,600 a year, plus an additional $100 per engineering course. The program would be open to students at any college or university in Maine, public or private.

“If Maine wants to be competitive, we need to step up to the plate,” said Rep. Matthew Pouliot, R-Augusta, a member of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee. “We ought to invest in the incentive to get people here.”

Norbert said they are seeking $10 million in seed money from the state to launch the program, with future funding possibly supplemented by local businesses. One approach could be to offer tax credits to employers that match payments toward the student loans. FAME is a quasi-independent state agency that distributes funds authorized by the state to Maine residents for business and education opportunities.

The governor discussed the proposal Monday with members of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce. LePage’s office did not return calls seeking comment.

Norbert is confident they could find state funds to seed the program with LePage’s help.

“This is a real priority for him,” he said. “This has been very collaborative.”

FAME already offers several student loan programs that offer loan forgiveness if graduates work in the state in specific fields, such as dentistry or education. It also offers low-interest loan programs for particular fields, such as postgraduate medical, dental and veterinary education.

Maine college graduates also can get a tax break through the Educational Opportunity Tax Credit, which offers graduates with an associate degree from a Maine college or university nearly $800 in yearly state income-tax credits, and over $4,000 for those with a bachelor’s degree.

Residents of Regional School Unit 14 in Windham and Raymond will vote Wednesday on whether to change the formula used to split education costs between the towns.

The new cost-sharing structure would increase the tax burden for Windham residents, decrease the cost to Raymond residents, and change how capital improvements are paid for, according to the district’s plan.

School board officials already unanimously approved the new plan in January, but residents must weigh in before it can go into effect.

Based on the current cost-sharing formula, Windham pays 55 percent and Raymond pays 45 percent of costs that exceed the state-required minimum. The cost-sharing formula was determined when the combined district was created in 2008, and was based on three previous years’ education costs in each town.

The new formula, however, is based on the value of property in each town, and would mean Windham would pay 64 percent of school costs, with Raymond paying for 36 percent.

Based on 2015 costs, and for a home worth $250,000, a Windham resident would eventually pay $51 more toward education. A Raymond resident with a home of the same value would pay $90 less.

If the new measure passes, it would be phased in over three years.

The proposed change comes as Raymond examines whether it will withdraw from the district, amid questions about costs for school building upgrades.

The vote Wednesday would address this concern, reformulating how capital improvements are paid for between the towns. The new configuration would place the majority of the cost for a major capital expense on the community of the school where the capital improvement is to take place.

The vote will be held at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Windham High School Auditorium.

This story was updated at 10:15 a.m., March 24, to correct the time of the meeting.

The Portland School Board held a public hearing and gave a first reading to the proposed $102.8 million school budget on Tuesday night.

The board will vote on the budget March 31 to send it to the City Council for consideration. A public referendum on the budget will be held May 12.

Only one person spoke at the public hearing. Steven Scharf urged the board members to find ways to trim the budget.

“We need to put some brakes on,” he said, noting that the school budget and associated cost to taxpayers increases every year. “We can’t keep going in this direction. We need to have somebody on your board say, ‘Stop, we’re paying too much.'”

The proposed budget would increase the school portion of Portland’s tax rate by 23 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, adding $46 to the annual tax bill for a $200,000 home.

Two-time gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler is being hired by the University of Maine System to oversee the establishment of a new graduate business and law school in Portland.

The university system plans to announce next week that Cutler has been chosen to create what’s being called the Alfond Professional and Graduate Center, according to several people who have been briefed on the appointment.

The center would operate in Portland and combine the graduate business programs at the University of Southern Maine in Portland and the University of Maine in Orono, and the University of Maine School of Law, which is on USM’s Portland campus. Further details are unknown at this time, including whether the Muskie School of Public Service, also located at USM, would be included in the new center.

Cutler, a Cape Elizabeth resident, ran for governor as an independent in 2010 and 2014. His best showing was in 2010, when he narrowly lost to Gov. Paul LePage. In 2014, Cutler placed a distant third with only 8 percent of the vote.

Cutler was out of the country Tuesday and could not be reached. University officials and others contacted to confirm Cutler’s appointment were not authorized to speak publicly.

Dan Demeritt, spokesman for the University of Maine System, would not confirm the news. He said the process of combining the business and law school programs, which began last year, is nearing its end. However, he said no contract has been signed with anyone to lead the establishment of the new center.

Cutler, 68, is a Bangor native with a distinguished career in government and the law. He graduated from Harvard College and later earned a law degree from Georgetown University.

After graduating from Harvard, Cutler worked in Washington, D.C., for U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie, the powerful Democratic senator from Maine. He went on to become associate director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter.

Cutler has extensive experience in the private sector, as well. He founded his own environmental law firm, Cutler & Stanfield, in the late 1980s, which he eventually sold to an international firm, Akin Gump. More recently, Cutler spent many years opening international law offices for Akin Gump in China before returning to Maine to live full time. He sits on the Board of Visitors of the Muskie School.

A NEW ‘TRANSFORMATIVE’ DIRECTION

In fall 2013, system Chancellor James Page began to formulate the idea of a combined professional and graduate center that would serve as a “home for entrepreneurial, multi-disciplinary business and legal programs to drive economic development statewide,” he wrote in a November 2014 memo to the university system’s board of trustees.

With $500,000 from the Harold Alfond Foundation, the system commissioned a report from the The Parthenon Group, a Boston-based consultancy, to explore the concept of such a school and its market viability. That report, presented to system officials in late 2014, found that such a center “is indeed a transformative concept” for the system, Page wrote in the memo.

“Based on the business/legal community’s enthusiastic endorsement of the core concept, bringing graduate business and legal education under one roof could catalyze the growth of small to medium businesses across Maine,” Page wrote.

The Parthenon Group’s report has not been made public.

Members of the system’s business schools have previously voiced concern about the proposal.

At a USM Faculty Senate meeting in May 2014, Bob Heiser, an assistant professor of marketing at USM’s business school, said the planning to date had been too secretive and the faculty had insufficient input in the process, with “no direct contact with the (Parthenon) consultants and no written updates whatsoever.”

Reached Tuesday, Heiser said he had heard nothing for months about the proposal to combine the business programs. He expressed frustration that secrecy over the plan has persisted.

Robert Strong, a professor of finance at the business school in Orono, was on the original committee that worked with consultants from The Parthenon Group and helped develop the concept for the center.

That working group hasn’t met in months, and Strong said Tuesday that he had no knowledge of Cutler being chosen to establish the new combined graduate school.

ACCREDITATION, MODERN FACILITIES

Strong likes the concept of combining the business programs, but said many people involved have legitimate worries about the organizational details, including how Orono-based professors would teach in a Portland-based center and whether a degree from the graduate center would be considered a system degree or be affiliated with USM or Orono. Strong also said people worry that those in charge are underestimating how hard it would be for the new center to receive accreditation.

“In principle, the idea has some merit,” Strong said. “We just want to make sure we figure out all the ins and outs and make sure the program will pass muster with the accreditation agencies.”

The number of MBA graduates coming out of the individual business schools in Portland and Orono has varied widely in recent years. On a systemwide basis, it ranges from 60 to 80 annually. During the 2012-13 school year, Orono had 19 MBA graduates, down from 32 in 2011-12. USM had 41 graduates during the 2012-13 school year, up from 33 in 2011-12.

The law school – which already has joint degree programs with the business schools and the Muskie School – has long sought better facilities. Outgoing law school Dean Peter Pitegoff has said the current building, a distinct round structure built in 1972 on USM’s Portland campus, lacks adequate lounge, study and classroom space and access to technology that students expect. A new facility could offer up-to-date technology and have adequate space for classrooms, public events and work with clients.

Staff Writer Noel Gallagher contributed to this report.

Residents of Windham and Raymond voted Wednesday to change the formula the towns use to split education costs in Regional School Unit 14.

The final vote, on a show of hands in the Windham High School auditorium, was 167 yes and 20 no.

The new cost-sharing structure will increase the tax burden for Windham residents, decrease the cost to Raymond residents and change the way capital improvements are funded. School board officials unanimously approved the new plan in January. The change will be phased in over three years.

Under the current formula, Windham pays 55 percent and Raymond pays 45 percent of school costs that exceed the state-required minimum. Under the new formula, Windham will pay 64 percent of school costs by the 2018 school year, with Raymond paying 36 percent.

Based on 2015 costs, a Windham resident with a home worth $250,000 will eventually pay $51 more a year for the public schools. A Raymond resident with a home of the same value will pay $90 less.

The change also will put most of the cost for any major capital expense on the town of the school where the capital improvement is to be done.

Raymond has been examining whether it will withdraw from the district, with questions about costs for school building upgrades.

Maine’s business leaders are applauding the selection of former gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler by the University of Maine System to establish a centralized graduate business and law center in Portland.

However, faculty members at the University of Southern Maine are not pleased.

The University of Maine System has yet to publicly confirm Cutler’s appointment to oversee the creation of the graduate center, but several people briefed on the appointment have confirmed him as the choice. Cutler declined an interview request on Wednesday, saying he won’t comment until next week.

“I want to get everything straight,” he said.

The plan to consolidate the graduate business degree programs of USM and the University of Maine in Orono, as well as the University of Maine School of Law in Portland, has provoked controversy, especially among faculty, since early last year when James Page, chancellor of the university system, floated the idea of consolidating the programs in Portland and getting them more engaged in the business community.

The controversy spans the territorial – which schools will get credit for the degrees? – to how the university system has undertaken the process.

Susan Feiner, a professor of economics at USM and president of the faculty’s union, called Cutler’s appointment “extremely problematic.”

“Regardless of his qualifications, the appointment is way outside of what is considered standard academic practice,” she said. “There was no shared governance in this at all and it’s very clear in our constitution that faculty are to play a significant role in electing people who direct the academic enterprise. I’ve been deeply bothered that the whole project around this graduate center has gone on with so much secrecy and no transparency.”

Controversy, however, is to be expected when bold moves are called for, according to Ed Cervone, executive director of Educate Maine, a Portland-based nonprofit that works to improve Maine’s educational landscape.

“Often big change comes with some heartache and heavy lifting,” he said. “But overall it looks like it’s moving us in a good direction, offering us opportunities and engaging some pretty smart leaders who are thinking about our future and our economy’s future.”

WORTH THE COST?

Developing this new combined business and law graduate center would cost between $15 million and $75 million, depending on the level of commitment the university system’s board of trustees wants to make, according to a consultant’s feasibility study completed last fall.

At the expensive end of that spectrum, the consultants from the Boston-based Parthenon Group envision a “complete, state of the art facility built with projected growth in mind, with flexible space used as shared workspace or incubator space.”

That cost is hard to swallow after the system has been cutting jobs and dropping academic programs, according to Feiner.

The University of Maine System has had a rough few years as it struggles with dwindling enrollment. The system has eliminated 556 positions in the past two years, and cut $30 million from the next two fiscal year budgets, according to a speech Chancellor Page gave in March to the Maine Legislature on the state of the university system.

The report’s projections estimate that by year five, the center would have revenue of $18.1 million and net proceeds of $1.4 million.

The number of MBA graduates coming out of the individual business schools in Portland and Orono has varied widely in recent years. On a systemwide basis, it ranges from 60 to 80 annually.

The number of MBA graduates of USM has dropped significantly in the past few years. USM’s business school graduated 19 MBA students after the 2013-14 school year, down from 41 in 2012-13 and 33 in 2011-12.

In Orono, there were 22 MBA graduates after the 2013-14 school year, up slightly from the year before, but down from 32 in 2011-12.

Spending tens of millions of dollars on that small a number of students is “crazy,” Feiner said.

“Why would they be spending $70 million for a maximum 200 students when the rest of the student body is in classrooms that are falling down around them?”

Shawn Moody, an entrepreneur and former gubernatorial candidate who sits on the UMS board of trustees, disagrees.

“I realize people will see this as controversial, but I think we can all agree we’re not going to cut our way to prosperity,” said Moody, who’s president of Moody’s Collision Centers, the company he founded in 1977 as a senior at Gorham High School. “This is us starting to say we need to make priorities and the business school and law school are priorities, and that’s where we’re going to make a strategic investment.”

Making such an investment is sometimes necessary, according to Andrea Cianchette Maker, an attorney at Pierce Atwood and leader of the firm’s government relations practice.

“The state of Maine needs to make some bold moves to propel us out of the economic doldrums,” she said. “This is one of those moves. I applaud it. And I’m excited about what it can do for our state.”

Specifically, Maker thinks the combining of graduate business and law degrees is a smart move. Maker received an undergraduate business degree from the University of New Hampshire before studying law at the University of Maine School of Law.

“I’ve always thought that combination would provide a solid foundation for moving in any number of directions,” she said. “And I’ve been a number of directions and it has served me well.”

Feiner made clear that she is not arguing that combining the graduate degree programs is a bad idea; she just wishes the faculty had as great a say in the matter as it seems some members of the business community have.

“For goodness’ sake, each one of us has a Ph.D.,” Feiner said. “That’s part of the arrogance of the board of trustees to dismiss our expertise because we haven’t run businesses.”

‘DYNAMIC’ PROFESSIONAL SOUGHT

The University of Maine System posted on Feb. 18 a job advertisement for “a dynamic and innovative professional who will drive the creation of a multi-disciplinary professional and graduate center in partnership with Maine’s business and professional community.”

Suitable candidates will exhibit “demonstrated leadership” and “a significant record of achievement” in the private or nonprofit sector, the ad says. It also calls for someone with “a record of strong entrepreneurial leadership, including innovation, a history of building and sustaining consensus around change and demonstrated concrete outcomes.”

Cutler, 68, has had a long career spanning government, business, the law and politics.

After graduating from Harvard, Cutler worked for U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie and eventually was appointed associate director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter.

He then went on to found his own environmental law firm and worked around the world, most recently in China, before returning to Maine. He unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010 and 2014.

Those credentials make him a good candidate for the job, according to members of Maine’s business and economic development communities.

“I think getting a leader such as Eliot is a big step in making big change happen,” Cervone said.

“He’ll be an awesome leader for that center,” said Jess Knox, coordinator for the Blackstone Accelerates Growth economic development initiative. “His business and legal background is enormous. His experience in China and other markets is a huge asset. If he can bring that to the university’s graduate studies program, it’s a huge win for Maine.”

Charles Lawton, chief economist for Planning Decisions Inc., believes Cutler’s relationships with members of Maine’s business community is exactly what a leader of the new center will need to successfully integrate the school into the local business community, as well as forge connections with those of out of state.

“That the University of Maine is offering this program is very positive, and that we’re going to put a person of significant stature with business and legal contacts all over world in charge of it is doubly significant,” Lawton said.

Despite Cutler’s qualifications, Feiner said faculty members are still skeptical.

The job posting says applications will be accepted until the position is filled, but adds that “applications received after the first screening date on March 6, 2015 will be considered at the discretion of the university.”

That narrow window has caused some to question the method by which Cutler was picked.

Feiner said she spoke to a dozen faculty members on Wednesday “and to a person they said that it’s cronyism and that it’s probably LePage’s payoff to Cutler for helping LePage get re-elected.”

She continued: “Leadership positions in the (University of Maine System) appear to be a jobs program for the state’s 1 percent.”

SYSTEM STILL MUM

Officials from the University of Maine System remained silent Wednesday on Cutler’s appointment.

“We’re no further along in our ability to release any details,” said Dan Demeritt, the system’s spokesman. “The process is still not finalized and we won’t have an announcement until we have a signed contract with our finalist.”

Demeritt did, however, offer additional details on the proposed center.

Its name has not been chosen. He was not aware of when people began calling it the Alfond Professional and Graduate Center, but said that’s not final.

He said another misconception is that the center would combine business schools of USM and UMaine. The business schools are not being combined, he said, just the MBA programs.

“This is not about consolidating business schools,” Demeritt said. “We can’t speak in absolutes, but what’s envisioned through the recommendation of the Parthenon report is in line with the One University initiative, where we have strategic alignment of our administrative and academic programs across the state.”

The One University initiative was adopted by the system’s board of trustees last summer. It sets the goal of shedding administrative costs by creating a fully integrated university with campuses pursuing different missions.