Whatever happened, Gabriella Latini knew she was heading south in the fall.

She had put down a $500 deposit at The University of Tampa and applied for housing on its downtown campus with a classmate from Westbrook High School.

But exactly where she’d spend the next four years wasn’t entirely resolved. She still had one college left to hear from – her top choice and biggest reach.

“I’ve kind of put it in my mind that I won’t get into Vanderbilt,” she said, weeks before she expected the notification from the private university in Nashville. That decision, however, would determine the destination on her plane ticket in the fall.

Since hearing from Tampa in early March, Latini had been sporting the red sweatshirt she bought during a visit to the campus in February, perusing the websites of restaurants in the Florida city, even checking out apartments online to see what her options would be as an upperclassman.

“We’re planners,” said her mother, Christine Latini, who started taking her daughter on college tours when she was in sixth grade.

A member of an all-national choir with an aversion to standardized tests, Gabriella Latini applied to seven colleges last fall. Between mid-December and early March, she heard back from six and got into them all.

“It’s great,” her mother said with muted enthusiasm. “A couple saying no would have been a little bit easier.”

There was Ithaca College in upstate New York, where she has a friend who’s a junior, and the University of Vermont, which has a Holocaust studies program she liked. Bryant University in Rhode Island offered her a $20,000 break on tuition and half off graduate school, if she ever wanted to go.

To help make a decision, she devised a point system that took into account the cost, housing, distance from home, the weather and whether she could bring her car. In the end, it was the feeling she had walking the campus that made The University of Tampa rise to the top.

For the most part, the process ended there. Her decision was made.

But, she said, “there is part of me in the back of my mind that says, there’s a chance.”

Vanderbilt was by far the most selective school she applied to, with an acceptance rate of 13 percent – one of several statistics that Latini had laid out in a chart she made in the fall to compare all the colleges she was considering.

Motivated but mellow, the petite blond honors student said it’s her habit of being “insanely organized” that’s gotten her elected class president the past four years.

“I just like to get things done,” she said.

It’s a quality she shares with her mother, who decided to stay home to raise her and her husband’s only child, but ended up taking on a full-time workload as a volunteer at school and on city committees.

She’s most committed to her role as an advocate for her daughter’s education, helping her get approved for an independent study when she wanted to take Italian, a language that wasn’t offered at her school. When the Common Application became available on Aug.1, Christine Latini spent the day filling one out with her own information from high school just to see what it was like. Lately, she’s been shopping for decorations and setting up appointments with vendors for the Hollywood-themed senior prom.

Because of their family’s visibility at school and in Westbrook, where both of Latini’s parents grew up and her father has an eponymous electrical business, she wanted more anonymity in college – a big campus where she would blend in with the crowd. She refused to apply anywhere in Maine.

She assumed she’d major in music, the academic subject and extracurricular activity that took up more than half of her time in high school. But after having a bad professor at a summer program at the University of Miami, she decided she’d make singing a hobby and study a field with more promise of a steady paycheck. She landed on public relations, figuring it would fit the same skills that helped her excel at organizing fundraisers and proms. The change of heart became the subject of her application essay.

As winter came around, she decided she was done with the weather, too, and wanted to go somewhere warm. She’s not worried about being so far from home, though it helps that her grandparents have a house on the coast of Florida.

“It’s the one chance I have to go somewhere,” she said.

After 18 years devoted to parenting, her mother has no qualms about being a plane ride away either: “She’s ready to fly.”

April 1 was the day Vanderbilt would notify applicants of whether they were admitted, the university had told her in an email when she submitted her application. If it was going to happen earlier, she was assured she’d hear.

Located in the music industry mecca, the college had the weather she wanted and the best education for the price – only about $5,000 a year, according to a need-based financial aid calculator on its website.

Unlike the six other colleges, Vanderbilt didn’t offer the option of early action, in which seniors can submit their applications and receive admission decisions before the typical deadlines, leaving the best for last.

Latini didn’t know if she’d receive an email saying the decision had been made or if her application status on the online portal would simply change.

Logging into the portals had become a habit anyway, and Latini couldn’t help herself from continuing to do it a couple times a week, even though she had no reason to expect anything to be different.

She kept her user names and passwords for the websites on a piece of paper slid between the back of her laptop and its see-through purple case. There was a checkmark written in black Sharpie next to all but one.

She wore her black and gold Vanderbilt sweatshirt to a prom committee meeting Sunday in the high school cafeteria, where she covered glass centerpieces in glitter, not knowing she had an unread message in the inbox of her school email account.

Back at home that afternoon, she was sitting on a couch in the living room, watching NASCAR with her dad, when she logged into the portal for no particular reason. A letter from the university immediately appeared on the screen. The first line was all she had to read.

She turned to her father and told him the news, then walked upstairs, put her Vanderbilt sweatshirt in the laundry basket, slipped into her red Tampa hoodie and went back to watching TV.

WASHINGTON — Sarah Dieffenbacher is on a debt strike. She’s refusing to make payments on the more than $100,000 in federal and private loans she says she owes for studies at a for-profit college that she now considers so worthless she doesn’t include it on her resume.

The sentiment is catching on.

Calling themselves the “Corinthian 100″ – named for the troubled Corinthian Colleges Inc., which operated Everest College, Heald College and WyoTech before agreeing last summer to sell or close its 100-plus campuses – about 100 current and former students are refusing to pay back their loans, according to the Debt Collective group behind the strike.

They’re meeting Tuesday with officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent government agency that already has asked the courts to grant relief to Corinthian students who collectively have taken out more than $500 million in private student loans.

The Education Department is the group’s primary target, because they want the department to discharge their loans. A senior department official is scheduled to attend the meeting.

Denise Horn, an Education Department spokeswoman, said the department has taken steps to help Corinthian students, but is urging them to make payments to avoid default. The department has income-based repayment options.

By not paying back their loans, the former Corinthian students potentially face a host of financial problems, such as poor credit ratings and greater debt because of interest accrued.

The former students argue that the department should have done a better job regulating the schools and informing students that they were under investigation.

“I would like to see them have to answer for why they allowed these schools to continue to take federal loans out when they were under investigation for the fraudulent activity they were doing,” said Dieffenbacher, 37.

Dieffenbacher said she received an associate degree in paralegal studies from Everest College in Ontario, California, and later went back for a bachelor’s in criminal justice before dropping out. She said she left school with about $80,000 in federal loans and $30,000 in private loans, but when she went to apply for jobs at law firms she was told her studies didn’t count for anything.

Dieffenbacher, who works in collections for a property management company, said she was allowed at first to defer her loan payments, but now should be paying about $1,500 a month that she can’t afford.

Makenzie Vasquez, of Santa Cruz, California, said she left an eight-month program to become a medical assistant at Everest College in San Jose after six months because she couldn’t afford the monthly fees. She said she owes about $31,000 and went into default in November because she hasn’t started repayment.

“I just turned 22 and I have this much debt and I have nothing to show for it,” said Vasquez, a server at an Italian restaurant.

Many of Corinthian’s troubles came to light last year after it was placed by the Education Department on heightened cash monitoring with a 21-day waiting period for federal funds. That was after the department said it failed to provide adequate paperwork and comply with requests to address concerns about the company’s practices, which included allegations of falsifying job placement data used in marketing claims and of altered grades and attendance records.

On Tuesday, the Education Department released a list of 560 institutions – including for-profit, private and public colleges – that had been placed on heightened cash monitoring, meaning the department’s Federal Student Aid Office is providing additional oversight of the schools for financial or compliance issues. The department said the effort was done to “increase transparency and accountability.”

The administration has taken other steps to crack down on the for-profit college industry, such as announcing a new rule last year that would require career training programs to show that students can earn enough money after graduation to pay off their loans. The rule has been challenged in court by the for-profit education sector.

WASHINGTON — Suspension rates dropped for many of the nation’s school districts, but U.S. students still lost about 18 million days of instruction to out-of-school punishments in the 2011-2012 school year, according to research released Monday.

Researchers at UCLA compared detailed data for every U.S. school district, presenting a mixed picture of discipline at a time of increased focus on the issue nationally.

They identified school systems in Missouri, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania that they said showed “alarming” suspension rates of 20 percent or higher for elementary school children. But they also pointed to 28 school systems in 17 states that had marked declines in suspension rates from 2009-2010 to 2011-2012, the most recent national data available. They found more than half of the country’s school districts had relatively low rates of out-of-school punishment.

“There are some large districts that have made some dramatic reductions in their suspensions and reduced the racial gap as well,” said researcher Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, which is part of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. The group’s report is called, “Are We Closing the School Discipline Gap?”

Even with some notable improvements, national suspension rates have not changed in a meaningful way and racial gaps persist, Losen said. Across all grades, 16 percent of black students were suspended in 2011-2012, compared with 7 percent of Hispanic students and 5 percent of white students.

The report comes at a time of heightened concern about out-of-school suspensions, which researchers have linked to greater risks of academic failure, dropping out of high school and involvement in the juvenile justice system.

The federal government issued discipline guidelines last year amid an effort to keep more students in class, reduce racial disparities and avoid unnecessary suspensions. Many experts have urged schools to use alternatives to suspension when possible.

“We conclude that our nation cannot close the achievement gap if we ignore the discipline gap,” the UCLA report said.

The researchers found racial disparities were pervasive. But many school districts showed relatively low suspension rates for all racial and ethnic groups.

The researchers urged education leaders to examine the data for lessons about best practices, to put more resources into training teachers and school leaders and to use school climate as an accountability measure.

The report cited suspension rates as high as 50 to 60 percent for secondary students in individual school districts in Illinois, Mississippi, Michigan and Arizona. “It’s really inexcusable,” Losen said. “These are school districts that are shouting out for help or intervention of some sort.”

The Portland School Board on Tuesday put off a proposal to start high school later in the morning, with members saying they had not sought enough public input and needed to study the issue more.

“I realized we hadn’t done a very good job of keeping our public involved,” said Marnie Morrione, the chairwoman pro tem.

The board is changing the times for all schools because it decided in December to add 20 minutes to the school day, starting this fall.

After a series of votes Tuesday night, the board agreed to keep the high school start times at 8 a.m., and add the 20 minutes to the end of the day, meaning the high schools will get out at 2:30 p.m.

The changes to the schedule mean the district will now use city buses to transport high school students, with some exceptions to accommodate students who live on islands and need to catch a 2:45 p.m. boat to get home.

Also Tuesday, the board voted unanimously to approve a $102.8 million school budget and send it to the City Council for consideration. A public referendum on the budget will be held May 12.

At earlier board meetings there was consensus among members that they wanted to start high schools later, based on numerous studies that say test scores improve and high school students do better if they start school later in the day.

But at a public hearing Tuesday evening before the board’s regular meeting at Casco Bay High School, about a dozen high school students said they opposed a later start time. Several said it would conflict with after-school sports and activities, part-time jobs and caring for younger siblings.

“There are a lot of students who are against the proposed change,” Deering High School senior Mohamed Nur told the board. “I believe it is very detrimental to student success in all three high schools.”

Nur, who previously was a student representative on the school board, urged members to “talk to the students, since they are the group of people who will be most affected by this change.”

More than two-dozen people spoke at the public hearing, and board member Jenna Vendil said she had received about 100 emails on the proposed changes.

The board asked the superintendent to form a task force to study a later start time for high schools, and to survey students about their interest in starting the day later.

The board also voted to change start and end times for elementary and middle schools.

Currently, elementary schools begin at 8:55 a.m. and end at 3:05 p.m. Some schools, including East End and Riverton, have special morning programs that start earlier.

The changes approved by 7-1 votes on Tuesday were:

• Elementary School Group 1 (East End, Longfellow, Lyseth and Presumpscot) – 7:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.

• Elementary School Group 2 (Hall, Riverton, Ocean Avenue and Reiche) – 8:05 a.m. to 2:35 p.m.

• King Middle School – 7:55 a.m. to 2:25 p.m.

• Moore and Lincoln middle schools, and Bayside (formerly West School): 8:35 a.m. – 3:05 p.m.

Board member Laurie Davis voted against the changes, saying they did not allow enough time for island students to catch the 2:45 p.m. ferry.

“I think we can do better,” Davis said, suggesting additional school time could be found by using the current early release days for instruction instead. “It is wrong to treat the residents and students and families in one neighborhood differently than we treat the rest of the city.”

Currently, island students are dismissed early to catch the ferry.

Under the new schedule, the extra 20 minutes will create a 6½-hour school day for students starting this fall. There will be fewer days in the school year – 178, down from 180 – but students will end up attending 46 more hours of class.

Maine requires that students attend a minimum of 175 instructional days a year. Local school districts set the length of their school day, but under state law the average instructional day must be at least five hours long, and no individual day can be less than three hours.

The school district is currently in discussions with Metro officials to work out a transportation plan for high school students.

Supporters say a deal with Metro would free up the school district’s 20-bus fleet for the elementary and middle schoolers and break the transportation logjam in the morning, in addition to boosting ridership for the city bus system. It would also allow students who live within two miles of a school to take a bus to school; those students are not allowed to ride the traditional yellow school buses.

Critics say Metro would be less convenient for students who live farther from school and are now served by yellow buses because they may have to walk farther to get to a Metro stop. Some parents have questioned how long the Metro bus trip would take, but Metro officials say it would be about the same time it takes a yellow school bus.

SOUTH PORTLAND — South Portland High School’s faculty has overwhelmingly approved a formal procedure for saying the Pledge of Allegiance that was proposed by students whose efforts sparked a national controversy in February.

The faculty leadership committee, representing 12 departments, unanimously approved the new pledge procedure proposed by senior class President Lily SanGiovanni and two friends. SanGiovanni is expected to adopt the new procedure Thursday morning, when she’ll say over the intercom, “I now invite you to rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

The faculty voted after SanGiovanni, Gaby Ferrell and Morrigan Turner delivered a formal presentation of the new procedure two weeks ago that included the results of an online petition signed by 86 students who supported the proposal.

“The faculty was impressed by the girls’ presentation,” Principal Ryan Caron said. “The petition showed there were more voices involved in support of this change.”

The faculty’s approval ends several months of controversy over the students’ effort to make it clear that participation in the pledge is optional under the law. SanGiovanni, Ferrell and Turner were concerned that they and other students had felt pressured or compelled by teachers to participate in the morning ritual.

“It’s very exciting,” SanGiovanni said Wednesday. “I’m super happy that the (faculty) agreed with our proposal. I think the compromise we made in the end they realized was really reasonable.”

The high school had no written procedure for reciting the pledge each day – a practice that resumed at the high school following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The faculty leadership team rejected the students’ proposal last fall to stop saying the pledge over the intercom but allow time during morning announcements when students could say the pledge in their classrooms.

SanGiovanni upset some faculty and community members in January when she added “if you’d like to” at the end of her daily request to join her for the pledge. The girls experienced a strong local backlash on social media before SanGiovanni stopped saying “if you’d like to” at Caron’s request. News of the girls’ thwarted effort then drew a national firestorm of news and commentary in both opposition and support.

“I think it was a bigger story outside the high school than at the high school,” Caron said. “I think many people were taken aback by the negativity directed at the girls. I heard (from people) from 30 states.”

In developing a new proposal, the girls dropped “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 procedure stipulates 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.

Caron said the pledge procedure will be added to the student handbook and incorporated into the back-to-school orientation program, when teachers review rules such as the dress code and the attendance process.

Caron noted that the whole experience has proven to be a learning opportunity for many people on subjects such as the pledge, the political process, the varying perspectives of others and the media.

“Society as a whole is more open and sharing information is more immediate,” Caron said. “It’s great that we have students who want to make change and are willing to study an issue and follow it through.”

After complaints from parents, Portland school officials are backtracking on a decision to start some elementary schools at 7:45 a.m., more than an hour earlier than the current start times.

“That’s just too doggone early, especially for the young kids,” Lyseth Elementary School parent John Mina said Friday. “A whole hour makes a big difference.”

The school board voted Tuesday to adopt new times for all district schools in order to add 20 minutes to the school day.

Most of the board’s discussion, and comments from the public, focused on whether to start high school students later. After a public hearing, the board voted to keep high school start times the same, but to have eight elementary schools start earlier.

That’s because of the additional 20 minutes of class time, and a limited number of buses to transport students.

But a group of parents objected to the changes and started a change.org petition this week.

“The school board botched this one big time and I will not stand for it!” Mina wrote on the online petition. “Do I want my child walking to school at dawn? Younger children need home supervision when they arrive home after school. Was there not any consideration for a working family that will need to leave work earlier or even need to find another job because their child will arrive home an hour earlier?”

Currently, elementary schools begin at 8:55 a.m. and end at 3:05 p.m. Some schools, including East End and Riverton, have special morning programs that start earlier. Under the changes approved Tuesday:

• East End, Longfellow, Lyseth and Presumpscot elementary schools would go from 7:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.

• Hall, Riverton, Ocean Avenue and Reiche elementary schools would go from 8:05 a.m. to 2:35 p.m.

On Friday, district officials proposed an alternative plan, which will be discussed at a 6 p.m. workshop Tuesday in City Council chambers in City Hall.

The proposed changes are:

• East End, Riverton, Ocean Avenue and Reiche would go from 8:05 a.m. to 2:35 p.m.

• Hall, Longfellow, Lyseth and Presumpscot would go from 8:55 a.m. to 3:25 p.m.

Lyseth parent Giovanna Bechard, who started the petition, said she was pleased with the decision.

“We were never given a proper chance to share our opinions, and it is nice to have an elected school board that is willing to work through the issue in a thoughtful manner – that is how the process is supposed to work. As a parent, I am glad to see that our voices matter,” Bechard said.

Board Chairwoman Sarah Thompson said the alternative times still allowed some schools to have an earlier start, for special programs, while addressing concerns that 7:45 a.m. was too early at other schools.

“We listened, we’ll take a look again and see what, if anything, we can do,” she said. “This is the best we can do based upon our fleet. We only have so many buses and so many drivers.”

In addition to Tuesday’s workshop, a public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. April 28 at Lincoln Middle School. The board would vote on any changes at its regular meeting on May 5.

Changes to the middle school and high school schedules will not be considered, officials said.

Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk said he supported reopening the discussion.

“It’s good to have a deliberative process and come up with a thoughtful response to all the feedback,” Caulk said. “This is an opportune time to do that because these schedule changes won’t start until next fall.”

Also Tuesday, the board will vote on how to make up snow days. Caulk has proposed that students stay in school for four extra days, getting out on Friday, June 19.

The district had six snow days this year, but the 180-day calendar is longer than the state minimum of 175 instruction days, allowing some flexibility in making up all snow days.

Students were originally scheduled to have their last day on Monday, June 15.

AUGUSTA — The University of Maine System would be required to spend more money on classroom instruction, get $2 million in one-time funds for marketing and recruitment, and face auditing by the state’s watchdog agency under several university-related bills before the Legislature’s education committee Monday.

Almost all of the bills are focused on the financial challenges faced by the University of Maine System and college affordability.

Other higher-education bills before the committee Monday would:

• Increase Maine State Grant awards to $2,500 for first-year students, and increase them by $1,000 a year up to $5,500 for fourth-year students. (L.D. 627)

• Direct the state’s finance authority to issue a $40 million revenue bond so Maine college graduates could refinance private student loan debt. (L.D. 784)

• Create a unified board of higher education to provide governance for the university and community college systems. (L.D. 393)

The University of Maine System has had years of deep cuts and multimillion-dollar deficits, which officials attribute to flat state funding, declining enrollment and three years of tuition freezes.

University officials plan to use $9 million in emergency reserves to balance the system’s $519 million budget for the fiscal year beginning in July. Last year’s $529 million system budget required using $11.4 million in emergency funds and cutting 157 positions.

“It’s clear we as a Legislature have failed the University of Maine System as we have cut and cut and cut funding,” said Rep. Diane Russell, D-Portland, who sponsored two of the bills. One bill, L.D. 18, calls on the Legislature’s watchdog agency, the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, to audit the system finances. Russell said that was necessary because there has been disagreement on “the common set of facts.”

Critics have said the university has overstated the need for cuts and could avoid a crisis by making different spending decisions.

However, the normal process for an OPEGA review is to ask the legislative Government Oversight Committee to consider the request. Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, chairman of that committee, said Monday that legislation requiring a review circumvents their bipartisan review and ability to set priorities.

Russell’s other bill, L.D. 19, earmarks General Fund money to restore program and faculty cuts.

“I am hearing right and left that students are not able to get into their courses because of the cuts,” Russell said. With fewer students in classes, and not entering certain majors, “it’s a downward death spiral.”

Several students and faculty members spoke in support of Russell’s bills, saying the cuts needed to be restored. The University of Southern Maine eliminated 51 faculty positions and five academic programs in the last year to help close a $16 million budget gap.

“The message which many of my fellow students have received is that their educations and futures simply do not matter,” USM senior Martha Smith said.

Chancellor James Page said the system’s financial gap is structural, and restoring the cuts would simply postpone them.

“We are wrongly sized, wrongly positioned and wrongly organized to sustain our current cost structure,” he said, noting that the system is undergoing streamlining and an academic review.

State funding for the system may increase this year. Gov. Paul LePage’s budget calls for boosting state funding 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 next fiscal year. That’s about half of what the system requested. Several other bills before the Appropriations Committee also add funding for the system or certain programs.

Rep. Ben Chipman, D-Portland, said his bill, L.D. 794, would require the system to increase classroom instruction funding from the current 27 percent of operating expenses to 40 percent by 2018.

“We all, including the Legislature, need to be involved in turning things around and keeping our university system strong,” Chipman said. “Given the amount of funding allocated every year to the University of Maine System from the state budget, the Legislature has an obligation to make sure this funding is spent efficiently.”

The committee plans to hold work sessions on the higher education bills later this week.

Maine’s high school graduation rate increased slightly to 86.5 percent for 2013-14, and remains one of the top in the nation, state education officials said Tuesday.

The graduation rate is up from 86.4 percent last year, and up from 80.3 percent in 2010.

“All children can learn and deserve equal opportunity to do so in our schools,” said acting Education Commissioner Tom Desjardin. “I want to thank Maine’s educators for their hard work in (helping) an increasing number of historically academically disadvantaged students find success.”

Maine’s overall graduation rate is 10th-highest in the nation, based on 2013 data from the U.S. Department of Education.

SIGNIFICANT SHIFTS

In subcategories, Maine ranks sixth in the nation for its limited English proficiency graduation rate, 12th for its economically disadvantaged student graduation rate and 14th for its graduation rate among students with disabilities, according to the federal data.

The graduation rates for all of Maine’s 134 high schools are available at www.maine.gov/doe/dataresources/.

Viewed over a five-year period, the graduation rates at Portland’s three high schools have shifted significantly, according to the state data released Tuesday.

Casco Bay High School, which opened 10 years ago as an alternative high school, jumped from 70.5 percent graduating in 2010 to 86.4 percent in 2014, but the graduating class size was only 40 to 60 students annually over that period. Deering High School’s graduation rate dropped to 78.7 percent in 2014, compared to 83.4 percent in 2010. The Portland High School graduation rate was 77.7 percent, up from 68.7 percent in 2010.

In other districts:

• Wells/Ogunquit, with 104 students, had a 100 percent graduation rate, the only school with more than 100 students to have a perfect rank.

• Portland suburbs did well, including Greely High School in Cumberland (98.1 percent,) Cape Elizabeth High School (97.5 percent,) and Yarmouth High School with 97.5 percent.

• Statewide, 49 high schools had at least a 90 percent graduation rate.

• Only a dozen schools had graduation rates below 80 percent.

• Lewiston High School’s graduation rate was one of the lowest in the state, at 69.9 percent in 2014, up from 66 percent five years ago.

“We’re still a long way from where we want to be,” Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster said. The district is adding alternative learning programs, more student support and greater attention to mentoring to improve its graduation rates.

Although the district has one of the lowest graduation rates in the state, Webster said its five- to six-year graduation rate is closer to 75 percent.

One big reason for the low graduation rate, he said, was multi-generational poverty.

“A material percentage of our students come from poverty, from homes with either low aspirations or they just don’t place value on education,” he said.

According to state figures, 71.5 percent of students in the Lewiston district qualify for free and reduced lunch, a common benchmark of poverty, compared to 46.6 percent of students statewide.

Internal data show that the district’s immigrant students have a higher graduation rate than non-immigrant students, Webster noted.

“What’s clear today is that we need to greatly expand our alternative programs. We have a lot of work to do to improve (the students’) success rate,” he said. “One thing that hasn’t happened is reducing our standards.”

PROFICIENCY LEARNING

The state’s schools are currently transitioning to what’s known as proficiency-based learning, which means students will not move on academically until they show that they have mastered a concept. Webster said that focus on individual proficiency on topics will help schools identify students who need more help earlier.

All schools will award proficiency-based diplomas starting with the class of 2018.

State education officials noted that graduation rates for Maine’s largest two minority student groups were up over the last three years. However, the number of students in those groups is much smaller, so a handful of students graduating or not graduating can result in big swings in the overall graduation rate. Among those results:

• The graduation rate for black students in 2014 was 79.2 percent, up from 72 percent in 2012. In 2014, there were 327 black high school graduates out of a total 12,362 high school graduates.

• The graduation rate for Asian students was 94.4 percent, up from 89 percent in 2012. In 2014, there were 220 Asian graduates in the state.

• The graduation rate for Hispanic students was 71.1 percent, down from 79 percent in 2011. In 2014, there were 163 Hispanic graduates in the state.

Portland school officials are considering new start and end times for elementary and middle schools after some parents complained some start times were too early and that staggering end times would disrupt athletic schedules.

The school board discussed the latest proposal Tuesday night at a workshop in City Council chambers. A public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. April 28 at Lincoln Middle School.

The latest proposal is to have all middle schools go from 7:45 a.m. to 2:25 p.m. Ocean, Riverton and Reiche elementary schools would go from 8:20 a.m. to 2:50 p.m. and Hall, East End, Longfellow, Lyseth and Presumpscot elementary schools would go from 8:40 a.m. to 3:10 p.m.

“The new proposal is well thought out,” said Lyseth parent Giovanna Bechard, who had opposed the earlier schedule, which had Lyseth and three other elementary schools starting at 7:45 a.m.

Also Tuesday, the board voted to make up snow days by adding four more days to the calendar, with students getting out on June 19.

The district is changing school times because the board added 20 minutes to each school day beginning this fall. While some parents complained about the early start for elementary students, there were also concerns that the staggered middle school schedule, with different end times, would cause problems with after-school sports and access to athletic fields.

“We received several concerns, and I believe those concerns merit review,” Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk told the board.

The high school schedule, from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., remains unchanged.

SEATTLE — States, not the federal government, would choose how to sanction or help struggling schools under a proposed rewrite of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind.

The proposal, released Tuesday, was written by the Republican chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Patty Murray of Washington.

Their bipartisan agreement calls for a shift of power away from the U.S. Department of Education and back to states and school districts, allowing states to decide how much student test scores should be a factor when judging a school’s performance or a teacher’s effectiveness.

It also marks a potential end to the stalemate over how to rewrite the widely criticized No Child law, which was enacted in 2001 and expired in 2007. Since then, nearly every state has asked for waivers from the strictest consequences of the law, which required all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, a goal that many critics have long said was impossible.

“This bipartisan compromise is an important step toward fixing the broken No Child Left Behind law,” Murray said in a news release. “While there is still work to be done, this agreement is a strong step in the right direction.”

Murray said the proposal would fix what’s broken in the law but keep what has worked, including tracking the academic progress not just of whole schools and districts, but also of smaller groups of students based on race, income and disability.

Under the proposal, students would still be required to take standardized tests in reading and math each year in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, as well as a science test three times between kindergarten and 12th grade. States would also be required to use students’ scores from those tests – as well as graduation rates – when evaluating schools, but states could choose how much weight to put on the scores and what other factors to use.

Murray and Alexander also are proposing a pilot program into what they called “innovative assessment systems,” but provided few details about what that might look like.

The bill would continue federal grants to help states and school districts improve low-performing schools, but school districts – not the Department of Education – would decide how to use that money to intervene. Under the current No Child law, schools deemed underperforming by Department of Education standards must set aside some of their federal money to offer students the opportunity to go to higher-performing schools, or to receive outside tutoring.

Also included in the Murray-Alexander proposal is language that would prohibit the government from mandating states or providing incentives to adopt any one set of learning standards, like the Department of Education did when it made adopting the Common Core learning standards a factor in its Race to the Top grant program.

Murray and Alexander have scheduled a discussion next Tuesday of their proposal in the Senate Education Committee.

District officials will remind teachers in Brunswick schools of the legally required division between church and state in the classroom, after a complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine about a fifth-grade teacher’s expression of a personal religious belief during a science class.

The ACLU’s letter, dated March 27, alleges that Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School teacher Lou Sullivan taught intelligent design to students during a lesson on the origins of the universe in January.

Brunswick Schools Superintendent Paul Perzanoski denied the charge and said that Sullivan, a 26-year veteran of the school, was simply responding to a question from a student, who asked Sullivan what his personal beliefs were.

“He said something to the effect that he believes in the Big Bang theory, but also believes that there may be a higher power,” Perzanoski said, paraphrasing Sullivan. “We told him he could not answer that particular question in that way again.”

ORIGIN OF THE CONTROVERSY

Sullivan did not respond to an emailed request for an interview.

The controversy began after a parent of a student in Sullivan’s class complained to the school about the lesson in which Sullivan reportedly discussed intelligent design with the kids, according to a letter provided by the ACLU.

The ACLU of Maine, in its letter, said Sullivan’s worksheet on astronomy included references to “some creation theories,” including “God made the universe,” an apparent violation of court decisions that have barred the teaching of creationism in public schools.

“The more we reviewed some of the material from the classroom, including an email that went home to the parents, we were concerned that the teacher was teaching intelligent design alongside scientific theories in a science classroom,” said Zach Heiden, legal director of the ACLU of Maine.

Intelligent design is the belief that the universe is the work of an intelligent force and not an undirected process such as natural selection.

The ACLU also has filed a Freedom of Access Act request with the Brunswick school department for curriculum documents, classroom materials, and policies and procedures for teaching students about the origin of the universe and evolution.

Sullivan wrote in a weekly email message to parents that “after discussing the Big Bang and Intelligent Design, I realized that my worksheet for the lesson was terribly inadequate,” according to the ACLU. The class helped him revise it, he wrote.

When a parent expressed concern, Sullivan wrote back.

“Basically, the ‘Intelligent Design’ discussion is something I include each year when I present my lesson on the Big Bang and other theories,” Sullivan wrote, according to the ACLU. “I began the discussion after years of speaking with families w(h)o have very different beliefs about how the universe was created. I try to allow all students to share what they believe about the creation of the universe.”

‘THOSE THINGS COME UP’

The ACLU declined to name the parent, or provide the full email exchanges with Sullivan, revealing only the excerpts that were quoted in its letter to Brunswick school officials.

Perzanoski said Sullivan’s emailed response to the parent was hastily written, and that it does not indicate Sullivan’s inclusion of intelligent design is an annual part of his lecture on the universe, only that it came up when a student asked a question once.

“As far as theories and beliefs, those things come up in discussions,” Perzanoski said. “Kids are allowed to express whatever they want. We can’t do that.”

Over the years, states and school districts across the country have tested the boundary between the First Amendment right against a state establishment of religion, and the desire by members of a community to teach students lessons about the world that reflect religious values.

The first major legal confrontation came with the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, when a Tennessee substitute teacher violated the state’s prohibition of teaching evolution in public schools.

Since then, the court has found that regulations requiring teachers to include religiously motivated items on curricula, alone or in parallel with scientific concepts, is constitutionally impermissible.

The latest of those cases, decided in 2005, came from a Pennsylvania school district’s policy that required biology teachers to present intelligent design alongside evolution, which was struck down by a federal judge.

AUGUSTA — Several bills aimed at improving college affordability for Mainers were tabled, rejected or watered down in the Education Committee on Thursday by lawmakers who said they wanted to focus their efforts on increasing overall education funding instead of supporting individual programs.

One bill, L.D. 627, would have increased the Maine State Grant awards to $2,500 for first-year college students, and increase them by $1,000 a year up to $5,500 for fourth-year students. The committee amended the bill, by Sen. Rebecca Millett, D-Cape Elizabeth, to remove the tiered increases and strip the funding, and passed a bill that would have the grants increase to $2,500 from their current $1,000 when funding was available. The amended bill passed 7-4 and will go to the Senate.

The committee’s Senate chair, Brian Langley, R-Ellsworth, said he supported the idea of increasing the college grants, but not the additional cost.

“My vote in opposition is not in any way a reflection on the need, because it’s there,” he said. But putting more money into overall funding, instead of funding individual programs, is the “number one priority,” he added.

Also Thursday, the committee tabled a bill, L.D. 784, that would have directed the state’s finance authority to issue a $40 million revenue bond so Maine college graduates could refinance private student loan debt. But it passed another bill, L.D. 878, that would allow the finance authority to create its own product for students to refinance student debt.

The committee also rejected a bill that would have created a unified board of higher education to provide governance for the university and community college systems.

SAN DIEGO — A 16-year-old transgender girl who spoke on YouTube about being bullied at school in Southern California killed herself, a support group said, raising questions about what educators can and should do to support students who change gender identity.

Taylor Alesana was constantly picked on by peers before taking her life last week, the North County LGBTQ Resource Center said.

“With few adults to turn to, and with no support from her school, her life became too difficult,” the group said. “Taylor was a beautiful and courageous girl, and all she wanted was acceptance.”

Alesana attended meetings at the center and was very supportive of others, said Max Disposti, the group’s executive director. She posted a series of online videos that included makeup tutorials and accounts of her struggles.

In a video posted in October, she said bullying began at a San Diego-area middle school when she disclosed that she was bisexual.

“I fear for anyone that’s even just a little bit different. They know what bullying is like,” she said.

Alesana said her family recently moved to Fallbrook, 70 miles north, and that she was “living my life as a girl now,” wearing female clothing on weekends and during summer. She eventually found friends at Fallbrook High School but encountered rejection first.

“I made a couple (friends), went from group to group. The group would usually kick me out after they realized, ‘Oh, you’re different,”‘ she said.

Alesana had a strong relationship with her school counselor but administrators “didn’t take the necessary steps,” Disposti said.

Experts said schools must train staff to be alert to bullying and instill in students that it is unacceptable, but they also need to acknowledge any of their own biases.

While everyone talks about the rising costs of college, possibly the best-kept secret about higher education is the college that’s nearly free – community college.

“I figured I could go off to some private four-year college and be crazy in debt, or I could come to community college for two years,” said Alec Beland, 20.

Beland, who considered Unity College, wound up studying precision manufacturing at Southern Maine Community College. He graduates in May, and will attend the University of Southern Maine in the fall to pursue a bachelor of science degree in technology management. His employer, Scarborough manufacturer LAI International, is reimbursing him for tuition, books and lab fees at both SMCC and USM, he said.

In the end, Beland will get his bachelor’s degree for about $3,000 in student loans, compared to four years at Unity College, where tuition alone would have added up to more than $100,000.

In the face of soaring college tuition, tight household budgets and the specter of graduating with large amounts of student debt, more students are using the famously low-cost community college system as a steppingstone on the way to a four-year degree.

Today about 45 percent of all undergraduates, or 7.7 million students, are enrolled in public two-year colleges. That’s up from about 5.7 million in 2000.

In Maine, enrollment in liberal arts programs at community colleges has increased to about 32 percent, up from 10 percent in 2000, said Maine Community College System spokeswoman Helen Pelletier.

One in four Maine community college graduates goes on to enroll in a four-year institution, according to a survey of the system’s 6,659 graduates between 2008 and 2011, she said. The University of Maine System says the number of local community college students who have transferred to its campuses is up 14 percent in the last five years, even as overall enrollment in the UMaine System dropped 7.5 percent.

In January, President Obama gave community colleges a boost by announcing a proposal to make them tuition-free for students, with the federal government picking up 75 percent of the cost, and the remaining 25 percent coming from participating states. In Maine, such an arrangement would cost the state an estimated $7 million a year.

Actor Tom Hanks urged support for the proposal in a widely published January op-ed in The New York Times, saying his time as a student at California’s Chabot Community College “made me what I am today.”

“We could get our general education requirements out of the way at Chabot – credits we could transfer to a university – which made those two years an invaluable head start,” Hanks wrote. With Obama’s proposal, “high school graduates without the finances for a higher education can postpone taking on big loans and maybe luck into the class that will redefine their life’s work.”

Maine college officials say that’s what they see on campus, particularly during and since the recession.

“Students see community colleges as a cost-effective pathway to a university education,” said Janet Sortor, vice president and dean of academic affairs at SMCC. “Our students want a good return on their investment.”

INTEREST FROM WEALTHIER FAMILIES

In Maine, annual tuition and fees at a community college are about $3,400, less than half the roughly $10,000 a year for Maine’s public four-year university system.

That has drawn attention from wealthier families who presumably can afford tuition at four-year institutions, according to annual surveys of students and families by student loan giant Sallie Mae.

SMCC culinary arts students begin cleanup after their culinary arts lab at SMCC in South Portland. Whitney Hayward/Staff Photographer

Sallie Mae’s 2014 “How America Pays for College” survey found that two-thirds of families crossed colleges off their list because of cost. At the same time, enrollment in two-year public colleges is at a peak and increasing numbers of wealthier families are sending their students to community colleges.

In 2014, 25 percent of students from families with incomes higher than $100,000 attended two-year public colleges, up from 12 percent in 2010, according to Sallie Mae.

Among all income groups, enrollment at two-year public colleges was 34 percent in 2014, up from 21 percent in 2010. At the same time, enrollment at four-year public colleges declined to 41 percent, from 52 percent in 2010, Sallie Mae found.

Higher education researcher David Jenkins said there is no specific research available on whether families are sending children to a two-year college before enrolling in a four-year to save money.

“We do hear it anecdotally, but it’s really hard to prove,” said Jenkins, senior research associate at Community College Research Center at Columbia University. The Sallie Mae reports are one of the best indicators of how various income groups are making school choice decisions, he said.

“This would suggest that it supports the anecdotal evidence,” he said.

“There’s a lot of social pressure to go to a four-year college. But this is the best value for the money,” said Rick Hopper, president of Kennebec Valley Community College. “Coming here is a no-brainer.”

As part of a specialized program for students in fire sciences, Breeanna Zoidis, 24, of Casco lives at the Kennebunk Fire Department’s central station while she attends Southern Maine Community College in South Portland.

Federal Pell Grants, which provide up to $5,730, more than cover the cost of tuition and fees at a community college. At KVCC, Hopper said 75 percent of students get those grants and about half the remaining students have their costs covered by local and state grants.

“If you come here, you probably aren’t going to pay anything,” he said.

A GROWING SYSTEM

Maine’s community college system is still relatively young.

Gov. John Baldacci signed the legislation in 2003 to turn the state’s technical colleges, which had been focused on job training, into a community college system with broader offerings, including liberal arts.

Today, the system has seven colleges – five with dorms – and enrolls about 18,000 students. In 2003, only about one in four students studied liberal arts programs, such as English, history and math, with the rest focused on career and technical programs. Today, about one in three students is enrolled in liberal arts programs, which are lower-division classes that will transfer to a four-year school.

Dan Lambert, 21, works on his senior project – a clock – at the machine lab at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland last month. He’ll be graduating in May and already knows what comes next: a job at North Berwick-based Pratt & Whitney.

In recent years, the Maine Community College System has expanded and added programs in computer forensics, network security, precision machining, veterinary technology and health information technology. It also has added campuses in Brunswick and Hinckley, and launched a fundraising foundation five years ago that has raised $26 million in private funding.

“Frankly, I’ve been very impressed with what the community colleges have been able to achieve,” said Baldacci, now a senior adviser with law firm Pierce Atwood.”They just seem to be more part of the answer, not part of the challenge. I feel very strongly that is what we need in Maine.”

The schools have been seen as a critical part of Maine’s economy, providing training for specific jobs in growing fields, such as health care, tourism and precision machining, while also being a resource for mid-career workers needing new skills or who were laid off during the recession and need new skills.

System officials and lawmakers are also working to make the jump from community college to university easier.

Ryan Nesteruk grinds metal components for a vice created for a class project in the Machine Lab at SMCC in South Portland. Whitney Hayward/Staff Photographer

Maine community college students who graduate from liberal studies with a 2.5 GPA are guaranteed enrollment as a junior at any UMaine campus through the community college’s Advantage U program.

The community college and university systems are currently working on simplifying transfers, due to be completed in May, that transfer 34-35 credits from the community colleges to UMaine System schools that would satisfy all general education requirements.

Simplifying students’ ability to transfer from a two-year to a four-year institution was in the limelight in January, when Gov. Paul LePage demanded the ouster of John Fitzsimmons, longtime president of the Maine Community College System, citing in part his dissatisfaction with the slow pace of the transfer policy and another program that allows high school students to earn college credits.

SHAKING THE STIGMA

Sanford High School guidance counselor Mat Kiernan said community colleges weren’t considered a serious option for those on a four-year college path.

“When I was coming up, in the late 1990s, community colleges weren’t a consideration,” Kiernan said. “There was sort of a bias against it on the East Coast.”

That was because they started out as vocational schools, initially conceived as a low-cost, low-barrier alternative to traditional four-year schools, he said.

English professor Kevin Sweeney speaks to his literature class at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland. Currently, about one in three students is enrolled in liberal arts programs, such as English and history, lower division classes that will transfer to a four-year school. State education leaders are working to simplify the transfer process as well.

Community colleges also have worse rates of retention and graduation, a key metric of student success, compared to four-year colleges.

The graduation rate at Maine’s community colleges, measured as the number of students who get a two-year degree within three years, is 25 percent, higher than the 22 percent nationwide. About 60 percent of University of Maine students get their four-year degrees within six years, slightly higher than the 57 percent national average for public four-year colleges.

Community college advocates say the comparisons are unfair because their student body includes far more part-time and older students than most four-year colleges. The graduation rate also doesn’t include students who transfer or take a job before graduating, or people attending just to pick up a particular skill and don’t intend to get a degree.

According to a 2012 study by the National Student Clearinghouse, 15 percent of students who started at two-year institutions in 2006 completed a degree at a four-year institution within six years, and two-thirds of them did so without first “graduating” from a community college.

Beland, the SMCC student, said he and many of his fellow students already have part-time jobs. If the goal is to simply get a job, many of them could leave before completing two years of coursework.

The remedial rate at Maine’s community colleges – the number of students needing math or English courses to prepare for college – has been under a microscope during the LePage administration. LePage has used the nearly 50 percent remediation rate to criticize Maine’s public K-12 schools, even suggesting he might introduce legislation forcing school districts to pay the costs of remedial courses.

Last fall, 46 percent of the 1,976 freshman students from Maine needed remedial courses, for which students do not get course credit.

Nationally, it adds up. The Community College Research Center estimates that the annual cost of remediation at community colleges is nearly $4 billion, and as high as $7 billion a year for all colleges.

COSTS INCREASING

Although community college is still cheaper than a four-year school, the costs are going up.

Over the last 30 years, community college tuition has increased 150 percent, compared to 225 percent for public four-year institutions, according to the College Board.

Lahana Palencia, a 20-year old student at SMCC in South Portland, poses for a portrait on campus. Palencia took a year off between high school and college, and after initially wanting to attend USM, she chose SMCC. abe Souza/Staff Photographer

In the late 1990s, the Maine system had some of the highest tuitions in the nation for two-year colleges, and the board froze it at $2,040, where it stayed until 2005. Today, tuition is $2,700, just below the national average of $2,713.

During the recession, students flooded community colleges at the same time state governments were cutting higher-education appropriations. Many state systems raised their tuition in response.

Maine bucked the trend, making only modest increases in tuition. Adjusted for inflation, Maine is one of three states in the nation that saw community college tuition and fees actually drop. By comparison, over the same five-year period, Louisiana increased its tuition and fees by 62 percent and California increased its by 58 percent.

Grant money offsets many of the costs, particularly because the rate of available aid, through grants and tax breaks, has risen faster than tuition and fees, according to the College Board.

Between 2004-05 and 2014-15, the average published tuition and fees at public two-year colleges increased by $730, or 28 percent, but aid and tax benefits increased by more than $2,000.

Grant money goes to about half of all students, whether they are at a two-year or four-year college. Student loans are another story. Only 18 percent of public two-year students take out loans, for an average of $4,700 a year, compared to 39 percent of students at four-year colleges, who take out loans averaging $6,600 a year.

In the end, almost 30 percent of all community college students pay nothing, or get money back for attending, according to federal statistics.

“I love it here,” said Kathy Sanborn, 40, a former school bus driver who is pursuing dual degrees in fire sciences and paramedicine at Southern Maine Community College. “I think you can get as good an education at a community college than you can at a higher-priced university.

“If you’re going back to school, this is the place to do it.”

Lahana Palencia was like many graduating high school students: planning to go to college, not sure what she wanted to study and scared of racking up a lot of student debt while she figured it all out.

“I graduated from (Pittsfield) high school an honors student. But I was like, I don’t know what I want to do. So I took a year off,” she said. She spent a year in Portland, working and pursuing her interest in art, before deciding to go back to college.

“I was going to go to University of Southern Maine, I was accepted and everything,” Palencia said. But she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to study and realized she could go those “first two years” of liberal studies at USM, or at a community college.

The price tag made the difference, she said.

“It was definitely a financial decision,” said Palencia, now a 20-year-old freshman liberal studies major at Southern Maine Community College. Two grants pay all her costs, so going to school there is free. Tuition and fees at USM come to about $9,000 a year.

Palencia still has bills, from living expenses to paying for books, so she works two jobs while attending SMCC. She has a cleaning job in downtown Portland buildings, and buses tables at Bintliff’s American Cafe.

“I don’t like owing money at all,” Palencia said. Keeping her debt low now will pay off later, particularly since she intends to continue her studies.

“Right now, I’m really leaning towards (attending) MECA,” the Maine College of Art. Tuition at that Portland school is about $15,000 a year.

It started with a scholarship and the kernel of a plan.

Dan Lambert had already been studying machining for two years as a high school student at the Biddeford Regional Center of Technology, and as a graduating senior faced a crossroads about what to do next.

He knew he wanted an engineering degree. The question was where to get it – and how to pay for it.

“I figured it was (Southern Maine Community College) or (University of Maine) Orono, and I knew Orono was out of my expense range,” Lambert said.

Wanting to avoid student loan debt, he considered the advice of his great-uncle, who was already in the machining business at Saco Defense, building guns.

“He told me, find a company that will invest in you as much as you are going to invest in them. What I found out is that Pratt & Whitney is one of those companies,” said Lambert, referring to the North Berwick-based jet engine manufacturing plant.

He decided to attend SMCC, won a $3,000 college scholarship from Pratt & Whitney, and wound up taking out only $7,000 in student loans to get an associate degree in precision manufacturing. He graduates in May, and already knows what comes next: a job at Pratt & Whitney.

“When I got the scholarship, it was a game-changer. I put it on my resume, got the interview, and I’m sure that’s why they hired me,” said Lambert.

“I start the day after graduation.”

Lambert, 21, will earn $40,000 a year there, but the real financial payoff will be the company’s tuition reimbursement program. They won’t pay off his $7,000 in student loans from SMCC, but after a year of working at Pratt & Whitney, the company will reimburse future school costs, up to $40,000 for a bachelor’s degree, and up to $60,000 for a master’s.

“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to work for them,” said Lambert, who is already thinking about getting a master’s in engineering.

He’s pretty confident it’s the right way to get an education for him, particularly when he hears what some of his friends have done.

“I have a friend who went to a four-year (university) studying theater,” he recounted. “He’s $60,000 in debt and working at Target.”

Avoiding a pile of college debt takes some work, he said.

“You’ve just got to have a plan. That’s what I did.”

When Breeanna Zoidis of Casco headed off to college, she wanted to get out of Maine. So she enrolled at Elmira College in New York, where tuition, room and board are more than $51,000 a year. Even with a scholarship, two years there put her $40,000 in debt.

Today, the older and wiser 24-year-old Zoidis is at Southern Maine Community College, closer to home and on the brink of getting her associate in applied science degree in fire science. Then she plans to roll right into her next SMCC program, an AAS degree in emergency medical services/paramedicine.

She loves the program, but the finances make sense, too, she said.

“I’m already $40,000 in debt and I only went (to Elmira) for two years. Here, I go for free. Actually, I get paid to go here,” she said with a laugh, explaining that she gets free room and board, plus a per-diem payment, as part of a live-in program that places SMCC fire science students in local firehouses. She lives at the Kennebunk fire station while attending SMCC.

Her experience has made her an advocate for community colleges, she said.

“I preach to people: If you are going to a college, start at a community college,” Zoidis said. “If you don’t especially know what you want to do, then do liberal studies and figure out if you like it or not” without spending tens of thousands in tuition at a four-year university.

“It’s much more economically sane.”

Westbrook Middle School students piled their food trays high with whole wheat pasta covered in fresh sauce, homemade bread, snap peas, ruby red tomatoes and pineapple – with no brownies, french fries or other junk food in sight. The students joked and gossiped like middle school students will, and seemed happy at the bounty of healthy food choices before them.

More than half of those going through the line willingly dug into the salad bar.

Maine appears to be on the cutting edge among the 50 states in improving the nutrition of its public school lunches, specialists say.

The typical school lunch in Maine is more nutritious than the national average, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture reports and statistics kept by the Maine-based Let’s Go! program, which coordinates and advocates for better nutrition in school lunches.

Cafeterias across Maine are waving goodbye to the institutional food of yesteryear, shunning greasy mystery meat, instant mashed potatoes and hard-as-rock cookies.

If it’s done right, the students accept and, in some cases, applaud the changes.

“It’s better than the food at home!” said Dima Ali, 10, a Westbrook Middle School fifth-grader, as her friends giggled and nodded in agreement.

“Those deep fryers, they’ve been removed,” said Heidi Kessler, senior program manager for Let’s Go! “When french fries are served, they’re now baked, not fried.”

What in “Taco Tuesday” is going on?

One incentive has been federal school lunch standards, which have become increasingly strict. Empty calories are out, and new mandates push school cafeterias to serve healthy food. Whole wheat, dark green vegetables and fruit are more and more on school menus.

Unlike most states, Maine enjoys a robust effort to improve the nutrition in school lunches, experts say, with the Let’s Go! program leading the charge.

The campaign encourages cafeterias to prepare meals above minimum federal standards. The state is broken up into “regional work groups” where food service managers get together monthly with Let’s Go! employees to brainstorm ideas. Let’s Go! is a partnership of several organizations, including MaineHealth, the parent company of Maine Medical Center; Harvard Pilgrim Health Care; Hannaford Supermarkets; and United Way of Greater Portland. Let’s Go! started in 2006, and uses its $1.2 million annual budget on a number of programs, including improving school lunches and increasing physical activity in schools.

PROGRAM LOOKS TO ADD SCHOOLS

So far about 93,000 schoolchildren, more than half the total public school population in Maine, are eating Let’s Go! lunches that exceed federal nutrition standards. Compared with the national average, Maine has more than triple the percentage of schools that have achieved a “U.S. Healthier Schools” designation – meaning schools that served meals well above the federal nutrition minimums.

Kessler said Let’s Go! will launch an outreach effort this spring to bring more schools into the fold, particularly in the Bangor and Augusta areas, with the goal of becoming statewide within a few years.

“We want to have a presence in every region in the state,” she said.

At Westbrook’s schools, food service director Barbara Nichols works closely with lunchroom manager Sally Hume to devise a menu that students will like.

“I stand over by the garbage line and look at what students are throwing out,” Nichols said. “If they’re throwing something out too much, we won’t serve it again.”

Hume said they pay attention to the increasing diversity at Westbrook, and will serve some ethnic food, such as falafel and tabouli.

“Most of what we make is from scratch,” Hume said. “We want to hear from the students.”

Nichols said they used to waste time packaging individual portions of institutional food, but now use the time to make homemade recipes. She said they make the food from scratch with the same number of employees.

Several fifth-grade students at Westbrook Middle School gave the food an enthusiastic “thumbs up.”

“We appreciate it, and we like it. It tastes better, it’s healthier and we get to choose what we like,” said Brady McKeough, 10.

“Delicious,” said Aby Erazo-Paz, 12, without a hint of sarcasm.

The ingredients to improving school lunches are similar to building a successful grass-roots effort, with a lot of encouragement, organization, incentives and ideas that come from the schools themselves. Those ideas are shared and then rolled out among the various schools. Let’s Go! also offers nutrition training for schools.

“Every idea that we’ve gotten has come from the schools. We want to build on the successes that they already have,” Kessler said. “We’re not sitting in an office dreaming up ways to be the food police.”

In Westbrook, Nichols said the group meetings with other Cumberland County schools have been invaluable. Participants share ideas on how to up the ante, serving nutritious food that the students will eat.

“I got a great chicken cacciatore recipe from them, and I wouldn’t have thought to put it on the menu otherwise,” Nichols said.

STRATEGIC PLACEMENT OF CHOICES

The idea is to make the healthy food appetizing, Kessler said, but also present it in a way that encourages students to choose it.

“It does us no good if we serve them lunch and the kids never pick it up or throw it away,” she said.

It’s food psychology, similar to how a grocery store strategically places items to maximize profit. Chocolate milk is put behind the white milk, and chips are moved away from the most common sight lines.

“Instead of putting candy next to the checkout, put a well-lit fruit bowl next to the checkout,” Kessler said.

Cornell University has studied this phenomenon, starting The Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs. Let’s Go! is sending Cornell’s Smarter Lunchrooms survey to all public schools in Maine this spring – to see whether they are employing the techniques, and also to encourage those that haven’t to join Let’s Go!

Simply placing food in the right areas, in an attractive way, greatly increases students’ willingness to choose the healthy food, research shows. Calling the food an irreverent name such as “X-ray carrots” “protein power chick peas” or “cheesy-squeezy burritos” will also help students pick them up.

“We have to remember to design lunches for the kids,” said Brian Wansink, professor of marketing at Cornell who co-founded the university’s Smarter Lunchrooms movement. “We don’t want to design adult foods for an adult palate.”

But Wansink said school cafeterias should also be careful not to make changes that would cause students to rebel. He said he’s seen some schools where more than 75 percent of the students now bring packed lunches because of heavy-handed, poor implementation of federal nutrition standards.

“When schools take away the chocolate milk, nothing really good happens,” Wansink said. “These are kids, and they should be allowed to enjoy indulgences, just like we do.”

Wansink said the key is to encourage healthy behavior, and that will help students make good choices. He said a bad outcome would be if more students packed lunches and brought in more junk food to the school.

Meanwhile, dessert at many Maine schools has become a “sometimes” treat, rather than an everyday occurrence, Kessler said. When dessert is served, it’s often a whole-grain cookie or a low-sugar fruit cobbler.

HIGHER COST, SOME RESISTANCE

Some changes to school lunch programs cost nothing or very little to implement, such as placing the fruit bowl by the checkout line. But it does cost more to serve healthy lunches.

The USDA’s National School Lunch Program reimburses schools an additional 6 cents per meal to comply with its new nutrition standards, but it costs 10 to 34 cents per meal to implement them, Kessler said. For a typical Maine elementary school, the cost to make the changes is less than $10,000 per year.

The federal changes to minimum nutrition standards have caused some resistance, and Congress is considering rolling back the nutrition requirements. Kessler lobbied against weakening the standards while visiting Washington in February.

She said the pushback has happened at schools that have not embraced the new federal standards and have not figured out a way to make healthy food appetizing for children.

For instance, if you have pizza day, make pizza with whole wheat crust, low-fat cheese and vegetable toppings. The kids still eat the pizza, Kessler said.

“Parents, give school lunch a second chance. It’s not what you remember,” she said.

SOUTH PORTLAND — Ken Kunin is looking forward to returning stateside and starting a new job as superintendent of schools here on Aug. 1.

“Across an ocean about 4,500 miles away, and looking to a big move back home this summer, already I cannot wait for school to start in September,” Kunin said Thursday in an email from Italy.

Kunin, who is principal at an American school in Rome and a former principal in Portland schools, was confirmed Monday to become superintendent by a 6-0 vote of the School Board.

Kunin has a two-year contract, running through June 30, 2017, with a yearly salary of $127,000. That’s $6,900 less than the salary for outgoing Superintendent Suzanne Godin, who announced in November that she will resign in June after eight years in the district’s top position because she wants to return to more classroom-oriented duties.

One of 25 applicants and seven semifinalists for the job, Kunin is the middle- and high-school-level principal at the American Overseas School of Rome, which serves 600 students from 50 countries. Prior to that, he was a senior research consultant for the Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation at the University of Southern Maine.

Kunin’s professional experience spans more than 35 years and includes stints as principal of Deering High and Reiche Community schools in Portland.

“From my many years living in Maine before my current four years in Italy, I know that South Portland is a great small city with an outstanding school system,” Kunin wrote. “It is a tremendous honor to be chosen as the next superintendent … in a community committed to providing an excellent education for all students.”

Kunin started his career as a teaching intern at the Walker Home and School, a special-education day and residential school in Needham, Massachusetts, where he later worked as a teacher and administrator. He has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Brown University, a master’s degree in special education from Lesley University and a certificate in educational leadership from the University of Southern Maine.

“Being in schools and seeing evidence of student excellence – made possible by great faculty and staff, of course – is what I most look forward to and what keeps me focused on what is truly important,” Kunin wrote. “My hope is that through my work I can be of service in setting the conditions where this excellence is not only possible, but inevitable.”

Kelley Bouchard can be reached at 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@pressherald.com

Twitter: KelleyBouchard