ATLANTA – Thousands of students are opting out of new standardized tests aligned to the Common Core standards, defying the latest attempt by states to improve academic performance.

This “opt-out” movement remains scattered but is growing fast in some parts of the country. Some superintendents in New York are reporting that 60 percent or even 70 percent of their students are refusing to sit for the exams. Some lawmakers, sensing a tipping point, are backing the parents and teachers who complain about standardized testing.

A bill in the Maine Legislature would require school districts to notify parents that they may opt out of having their children take the state’s standardized tests, a right they already have but may not be aware of. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Sara Gideon (D-Freeport).

In March, Maine students began taking a new state assessment test called the Smarter Balanced test, which is specifically written to align with the new Common Core state standards.

Resistance to taking the tests could be costly: If fewer than 95 percent of a district’s students participate in tests aligned with Common Core standards, federal money could be withheld, although the U.S. Department of Education said that hasn’t happened.

“It is a theoretical club administrators have used to coerce participation, but a club that is increasingly seen as a hollow threat,” said Bob Schaeffer with the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which seeks to limit standardized testing.

And so the movement grows: This week in New York, tens of thousands of students sat out the first day of tests, with some districts reporting more than half of students opting out of the English test. Preliminary reports suggest an overall increase in opt-outs compared to last year, when about 49,000 students did not take English tests and about 67,000 skipped math tests, compared to about 1.1 million students who did take the tests in New York.

Considerable resistance also has been reported in Maine, New Mexico, Oregon and Pennsylvania, and more is likely as many states administer the tests in public schools for the first time this spring.

ACCOUNTABILITY AS KEY FACTOR

The defiance dismays people who believe holding schools accountable for all their students’ continuing improvement is key to solving education problems.

Assessing every student each year “gives educators and parents an idea of how the student is doing and ensures that schools are paying attention to traditionally underserved populations,” U.S. Department of Education Spokeswoman Dorie Nolt said in an emailed statement.

Opposition runs across the political spectrum.

Some Republicans and Tea Party activists focus on the Common Core standards themselves, calling them a federal intrusion by President Obama, even though they were developed by the National Governors Association and each state’s education leaders in the wake of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program.

The Obama administration has encouraged states to adopt Common Core standards through the federal grant program known as Race to the Top, and most have, but each state is free to develop its own tests.

In California, home to the nation’s largest public school system and Democratic political leaders who strongly endorse Common Core standards, there have been no reports of widespread protests to the exams – perhaps because state officials have decided not to hold schools accountable for the first year’s results.

But in deep-blue New York, resistance has been encouraged by the unions in response to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s efforts to make the test results count more in teacher evaluations.

In Rockville Centre on Long Island, Superintendent William H. Johnson said 60 percent of his district’s third-through-eighth graders opted out. In the Buffalo suburb of West Seneca, nearly 70 percent didn’t take the state exam, Superintendent Mark Crawford said.

“That tells me parents are deeply concerned about the use of the standardized tests their children are taking,” Crawford said. “If the opt-outs are great enough, at what point does somebody say this is absurd?”

Nearly 15 percent of high school juniors in New Jersey opted out this year, while fewer than 5 percent of students in grades three through eight refused the tests, state education officials said. One reason: Juniors may be focusing instead on the SAT and AP tests that could determine their college futures.

Much of the criticism focuses on the sheer number of tests now being applied in public schools: From pre-kindergarten through grade 12, students take an average of 113 standardized tests, according to a survey by the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents large urban districts.

Of these, only 17 are mandated by the federal government, but the backlash that began when No Child Left Behind started to hold teachers, schools and districts strictly accountable for their students’ progress has only grown stronger since “Common Core” gave the criticism a common rallying cry.

“There is a widespread sentiment among parents, students, teachers, administrators and local elected officials that enough is enough, that government mandated testing has taken over our schools,” Schaeffer said.

PRESSURE TO IMPROVE RESULTS

Teachers now devote 30 percent of their work time on testing-related tasks, including preparing students, proctoring, and reviewing the results of standardized tests, the National Education Association says.

The pressure to improve results year after year can be demoralizing and even criminalizing, say critics who point to the Atlanta test-cheating scandal, which led to the convictions 35 educators charged with altering exams to boost scores.

“It seems like overkill,” said Meredith Barber, a psychologist from the Philadelphia suburb of Penn Valley who excused her daughter from this year’s tests. Close to 200 of her schoolmates also opted out in the Lower Merion School District, up from a dozen last year.

“I’m sure we can figure out a way to assess schools rather than stressing out children and teachers and really making it unpleasant for teachers to teach,” said Barber, whose 10-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, will be in the cafeteria researching Edwardian history and the TV show “Downton Abbey” during the two weeks schools have set aside for the tests.

Utah and California allow parents to refuse testing for any reason, while Arkansas and Texas prohibit opting out, according to a report by the Education Commission of the States. Most states are like Georgia, where no specific law clarifies the question, and lawmakers in some of these states want protect the right to opt out.

Florida has another solution: Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill strictly limiting testing to 45 hours each school year.

In Congress, meanwhile, lawmakers appear ready to give states more flexibility: A Senate committee approved a bipartisan update of No Child Left Behind this week that would let each state determine how much weight to give the tests when evaluating school performance.

The Obama administration has encouraged states to adopt Common Core standards through the federal grant program known as Race to the Top, and most have.

LOS ANGELES — The number of breakfasts served in the nation’s schools has doubled in the last two decades, a surge driven largely by a change in how districts deliver the food.

Instead of providing low-income students free or reduced-price meals in the cafeteria, they’re increasingly serving all children in the classroom. Food policy advocates say the change increases equity, however, it’s fueled a backlash from parents and teachers. They contend that it takes up class time that should be devoted to learning and wastes food by serving it to kids who don’t want or need it.

Lilian Ramos, a mother of two elementary school children in a working-class Los Angeles neighborhood, said she takes offense at the district’s assumption that she hasn’t fed her children: She serves them a traditional Mexican breakfast each day.

“They say if kids don’t eat they won’t learn,” Ramos said. “The truth is that many of our kids come to school already having eaten. They come here to study.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest with about 650,000 K-12 students, has been aggressively expanding its program, and by the end of the school year, will be serving breakfast in class at nearly every school. That growth mirrors an increase nationwide. Since 1994, the number of breakfasts served has climbed from about 1 billion annually to 2.3 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Across the country, 51 percent of children are considered low-income, up from 32 percent in 1989, according to the Southern Education Foundation. In a number of school districts, the vast majority of those children qualify for a free or reduced-price meal. In Los Angeles and Detroit, about 80 percent are eligible.

Proponents believe shifting breakfast from the cafeteria to the classroom is the most effective way to make sure all children are ready to learn. Students who come to school hungry, they argue, are likely to have a harder time paying attention.

There’s also a financial incentive for districts to expand breakfast. The federal government reimburses schools for each meal served. At LA Unified, the number of participating children has grown from 29 percent to 81 percent in three years, generating an additional $16 million, according to Laura Benavidez, the district’s deputy director of food services.

At Stanley Mosk Elementary, regarded as having a model breakfast program, teachers help distribute the meal, check off which students are eating and show a video to incorporate a nutrition lesson, all in 10 minutes. On a recent morning, students were given apples, cereal and a small, packaged breakfast sandwich. At the end of breakfast, there was a large cooler filled with uneaten breakfast sandwiches.

In Los Angeles, parents from wealthier schools organized against it, winning a concession permitting 32 schools with less than 20 percent of children who fall below the poverty threshold to opt out.

Parents at UCLA Community School, where Ramos’ children attend, also organized. They said the initiative took away instructional time from low-income and English-learner students, a group that scores persistently lower in reading and math. They also worried about unsanitary classrooms. The district temporarily delayed implementation but plans to soon start breakfast in the classroom at the school.

SOUTH PORTLAND — An unexpected and significant increase in the number of homeless students in the city’s public schools this year has officials cautiously budgeting for a similar situation in the coming year.

The increase is linked to Portland’s family shelter, which saw its own numbers rise last year and regularly used the Maine Motel on Route 1 in South Portland for overflow temporary housing.

The spike coincides with an apparent decrease in the number of homeless students in Portland schools and a stepped-up effort by the Maine Department of Education to identify and assist homeless students across the state.

Since July 1, South Portland schools have enrolled 107 students who were considered homeless under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, said Assistant Superintendent Kathryn Germani. That’s up from 74 students in 2013-14 and 40 students in 2012-13.

Most of the increase turned out to be temporary and was attributed to students who came from outside the district, including children of recent immigrants. Unlike in the past, when South Portland’s homeless student population tended to level off each fall, this school year the number kept increasing through February.

“We came back from Christmas break and there (was paperwork for) five more families on my desk,” Germani said. “It’s hard to plan in advance when you don’t know how many students will show up at your door.”

It also was challenging for the staff and homeless students involved, Germani said, but the district did its best to welcome the growing number of newcomers and accommodate their learning needs.

The number of families coming from Portland’s family shelter to South Portland schools has increased from two families in 2012-13, to 11 families in 2013-14, to about 30 families so far this year, Germani said.

A total of 61 students came through the family shelter and lived at the Maine Motel for several weeks before their families were placed in apartments paid for by Portland’s General Assistance Program or other welfare programs, said Jeff Tardif, shelter director.

LONGER SHELTER STAYS

While the shelter experienced a 9 percent decrease in the number of individuals served in 2014, it saw a 26 percent increase in the number of “bed nights” as the average length of stay increased from 34 days to 47 days, according to the shelter’s annual report. A lack of family-size apartments led to longer stays at the shelter and greater demand for overflow accommodations at area motels.

The Maine Motel has been an ideal place to house families while they wait for apartments because it’s locally owned, charges a low rate and offers clean, safe, well-monitored accommodations, Tardif said. The shelter had no families housed in motels last week.

Juned Dhamdachhawala, live-in manager at the 23-room Maine Motel, which is owned by his family, said he has developed a good working relationship with the shelter staff.

“Sometimes they get busy and they call me,” Dhamdachhawala said. “I charge the same for everybody – $60 a night, maybe a little more during the busy season.”

Some families housed at the motel have been South Portland residents, some have been immigrants, and some have come from out of state, Dhamdachhawala said. Shelter case workers “keep an eye on the families so they don’t do anything wrong,” and he checks the rooms daily as well.

Many of the 61 students from the family shelter were members of immigrant families that fled war-torn Central African countries, such as Burundi and Rwanda, and came here on visas seeking asylum, according to Germani and Tardif.

The impact was felt mostly at Skillin Elementary School, where the influx added 42 students over several months, Germani said. Many of the students were English-language learners, so the district added an education technician at a yearly cost of $40,000, including salary and benefits, and tapped $15,000 in a Title I account to cover additional tutoring and supplies. The students also increased the district’s transportation costs.

If South Portland schools experience a similar or greater influx from Portland’s family shelter in the coming school year, the district may have to reallocate staff members to work with English-language learners, Germani said.

IDENTIFYING HOMELESS STUDENTS

Students are considered homeless if they “lack a fixed, adequate and regular nighttime residence,” under the McKinney-Vento law. That includes children whose parents have moved in with family members or friends after being evicted, and high school students who are living on their own and “couch surfing” from one friend’s house to the next.

At this point, there are 47 homeless students in South Portland schools, most of whom were living in the district before they became homeless, Germani said. Nine are from immigrant families: five at the elementary school, three in middle school and one at the high school.

Maine school districts counted a total of 2,070 homeless students in 2012-13, 1,962 in 2013-14 and 1,701 so far in the school year ending June 30. Homeless student counts in previous years – about 1,000 in 2010-11 and 1,500 in 2011-12 – are considered incomplete and unreliable, said Samantha Warren, spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Education.

While homeless student populations tend to be larger near urban areas, numbers can vary widely from year to year and spike following disasters, such as floods, hurricanes or the series of arson fires that destroyed several apartment buildings in Lewiston in 2012-13. In that city, the number of homeless students has fallen from 145 in 2012-13, to 101 in 2013-14, to 72 so far this school year.

In Portland, Maine’s largest school district, the homeless student population has fallen from 284 students in 2012-13, to 251 students in 2013-14, to 179 students so far this school year.

Maine has stepped up efforts to better identify and provide assistance to homeless students in recent years, bolstered by $230,000 in federal funding this year for homeless student programs, such as tutoring and counseling. Most of the money was distributed to Portland, Lewiston, Westbrook and Regional School Unit 1 (Bath) through competitive grants, said Jacinda Goodwin, Maine’s homeless education coordinator.

Homelessness can be extremely disruptive for students, Goodwin said, especially when it’s complicated by other issues, including parents’ unemployment, addiction, incarceration, physical and mental health problems, abuse or neglect.

“Our goal is to ensure that students who are experiencing homelessness have stability in their school lives and can be academically successful as other housed students,” Goodwin said. “A good foundation in school can help a child overcome the challenges of homelessness.”

Jessica Ndayishimiye’s family lived at the Maine Motel for about a month after arriving in Portland on Dec. 28. Her home country, Burundi, was no longer safe for her father, a government worker, her mother, a secretary, and their five children.

Now, the family has an apartment in Portland, where she attends Deering High School. Ndayishimiye, who speaks five languages, including English and French, said she and her family are grateful for the warm reception they have received in local schools.

“It was very important,” she said. “I want to get my diploma and go to college for child care. Because you get to help other people when you know how.”

The superintendent of the Wells-Ogunquit Community School District has announced that she will resign her post before the school year ends.

Ellen H. Schneider, who joined the school district in 2013, will resign effective May 6 to take a job in northern Maine that will allow her to be close to her family, according to a statement released Thursday night by the District’s School Committee.

“Ellen’s father is very ill and she needs to be with him during this time. Ellen is leaving the district before the end of the year so that she can spend more time with him,” the school board said in its statement. “The board is confident that Ellen has left the district in good shape for an interim to assume the position.”

The board said that Schneider has agreed to remain available during the transition.

Schneider came to York County in July 2013 after serving as the assistant superintendent for MSAD 1 in Presque Isle and Westfield. Schneider replaced Elaine Tomaszewski.

The University of Maine System is exploring whether to seek a single accreditation for the entire system as part of its effort to have all seven campuses seen as a unified whole.

Other four-year public university systems have single accreditations, including Penn State, which has one accreditation for 24 campuses.

Maine’s four-year public campuses are now individually accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Accreditation means that a university meets peer-reviewed standards for the quality of its programs and resources.

A single accreditation could help the UMaine System as it implements multi-campus degree programs or shifts to a unified budget process. “We want to find out if this is the right way to go,” said Chancellor James Page.

The system plans to formally request an opinion in May from the association’s Commission on Institutions of Higher Learning, and meet with the commission in June.

“We do not know whether they will or will not recommend single accreditation,” Page wrote in an email Monday to the campus communities.

Several regional accrediting agencies operate in the United States, with rigorous standards and reviews to ensure that campuses comply. Individual academic areas such as business schools or engineering programs have their own specialized accreditation agencies.

After switching gears on various proposals to change school days’ start and end times, the Portland school board heard from more than a dozen parents at a public hearing Tuesday about the latest plan.

Most parents said they are glad the board is poised to scrap an earlier plan to start some elementary schools as early as 7:45 a.m.

“It would be extremely rushed in the morning,” said Erica Sabatino, who has a second-grader at Ocean Avenue Elementary School.

An early start would also conflict with early morning programs, such as chorus, that start at 7:45 a.m., she said. “I just feel like it will be a really stressful experience.”

The district had to change all school times because the board added 20 minutes to each school day, effective this fall.

The board will vote on the school times on May 5.

The latest proposal is to have all middle schools go from 7:55 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. Hall, East End, Longfellow, Lyseth and Presumpscot elementary schools would go from 8:40 a.m. to 3:10 p.m.

The two elementary school groups have to start at different times because there are a limited number of school buses available to transport students.

“There are only so many dollars,” said board Chairwoman Sarah Thompson. “We appreciate the parents sharing their thoughts, and we’ve received a lot of positive emails” on the latest proposal.

The schedule previously approved by the board had Lyseth and three other elementary schools starting at 7:45 a.m., and parents started an online petition asking the district to have a later start time.

In addition to concerns about the early start for elementary students, parents said they worry that a staggered middle school schedule, with different end times, would cause problems with after-school sports and access to athletic fields, or problems with teachers at different schools working together.

One parent said Tuesday that she is concerned about the plan to have middle schools start at 7:55 a.m., instead of the current 8:35 a.m.

“An earlier start is exceptionally difficult,” said Karen Richards-Simboli. She has a fifth-grader at Hall Elementary School who will be in middle school in the fall.

Middle school students, Richards-Simboli said, are starting to stay up later, have more homework, and have limited time with their parents, particularly in families with two working parents.

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

Cape Elizabeth’s School Board will hold a workshop Monday to figure out how to make a $110,359 budget cut imposed by the Town Council on the proposed 2015-2016 school spending plan.

The council’s finance committee, comprised of all council members, made the cut Monday to reach a no-increase bottom line for school spending and avoid adding 7 cents to the property tax rate. The committee made no cuts to spending proposals for municipal, county or community services that would add a combined 29 cents to the tax rate, according to budget documents.

The School Board initially approved a $23.6 million school budget that would have increased spending by 1.8 percent and resulted in a .4 percent increase in the overall tax rate of $16.80 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The proposed increase would have added $22 to the annual tax bill on a median-valued $314,285 home in town, according to a news release from board Chairwoman Joanna Morrissey.

“The 0 percent school department tax rate cap mandate from the Town Council will require the School Board to make some very difficult decisions,” Morrissey said in the release. “The School Board will make every effort to minimize the impact of these requested cuts on students and staff.”

The board’s budget workshop will be held at 7 p.m. in the library at Cape Elizabeth High School.

The council will hold a public hearing and vote on the municipal and school budgets on May 11. The council made no reductions to the municipal budget proposal, which would add 22 cents to the tax rate, nor to the county (3 cents) or community services (4 cents) budget proposals.

A referendum on the school budget will be held June 9, when voters can note whether they think it’s too high or too low.

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

kbouchard@pressherald.com

Twitter: KelleyBouchard

Social problems in the home, including poverty, drug use and violence, along with better ways to identify and respond to learning disabilities have contributed to a 35 percent increase in students needing special services at Mt. Blue Regional School District over the past seven years, according to school officials.

Superintendent Tom Ward said the increased need for special services, which ranges from help reading to behavioral therapists to social workers, is one of the largest changes in recent years in the Farmington-based school district’s educational landscape.

Fourteen percent of students in the district were eligible for special services in 2007. The figure rose to 19 percent this school year, in a district of about 2,240 students.

WEIGHING THE OPTIONS

As the school board enters deliberations on the budget this week, many of the proposals it will consider center on providing increased special education needs.

A third school social worker is being proposed. Two additional special education teachers are requested for the Mt. Blue Middle School. A committee has been formed to weigh long- and short-term solutions to the increased space requirements of special education programs at the middle school. One short-term option proposes portable classrooms for the school.

In the 2013 and 2014 school year, the district added a day treatment program to support students with behavioral and mental health problems and help them transition back into the regular classroom. Along with academic work for the 33 students now in day treatment, the program involves therapeutic work, social work and group work.

“It’s for obstacles to learning that aren’t academic in nature but are more mental health in nature,” said Christine Gatto-Shea, director of special services for the school district.

The other option, out-of-district placement, can cost $50,000 to $100,000 per student per year and the placements can be as much as an hour and a half away, Ward said.

“By us having day treatment program in the district rather than having our students placed out of district, it’s conservatively saving about $560,000 to the district every year,” Ward said.

One of the budget challenges for special education, he said, is that it involves a closer adult-to-student ratio than a general education classroom.

“We’re seeing an increase in the number of students who need one-on-one support from the time they get off the bus to the time they leave,” he said.

To respond to these challenges, Gatto-Shea said, the district is also adopting new educational tools.

One tool is a multi-tiered response system called Response to Intervention. The approach involves early identification of learning and behavioral needs and creating interventions tailored to those needs. The intensity and duration of interventions are based on individual student response to instruction with the goal of having the student in general education for as much of the time as possible.

If the student needs help only with reading, and needs it for a few months to learn the skills to keep up in a regular classroom, an intervention plan is tailored to that need.

Another approach used for the past five years is the Positive Behavior Intervention and Support System, which Ward said has helped “tremendously.”

Positive behavior interventions include anything from helping a child learn how to walk down the hall to teaching good classroom behavior.

Ward said such tools are necessary to help students gain the social skills needed to participate fully in school. In some ways, they are tools that replace the roles once taken by parents.”There’s less parental guidance in the home for children growing up, and that’s why we have to take on some of those responsibilities,” Ward said.

THE ROLE OF POVERTY

Poverty is the root of many of the problems the school is trying to address, and Ward said understanding poverty helps them look holistically at the changes they are seeing, Ward said.

Gatto-Shea said there is a correlation between the increase in the number of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches and the number of students needing special services.

In October 2000, 33.43 percent of district students came from households with incomes that qualified for free or reduced-price lunches, according to state education data. As of October 2014, 53.7 percent of district students qualified.

“It’s an issue of poverty, but also all the stuff that comes with poverty. Kids come to school not ready to learn. Their parents are socio-economically squeezed. They’re worried about keeping their job. They’re worried about heating their home. They’re worried about feeding their kids,” Gatto-Shea said. “If you’re talking about food or doing homework, food has to take precedence, and we see that effect.”

ENCOURAGING STUDENT ASPIRATIONS

With a $20 million GEAR UP grant facilitated through the University of Maine at Farmington, the school will be working with students starting in junior high school and will take a multi-faceted approach to help the students think bigger about what they can do after high school.

Gatto-Shea said that beyond the need to add special education staff, ,general education teachers need support to help the students with their learning, behavioral and mental health needs.

AUGUSTA — Andrew Breault had no plans to further his education after graduating from Waterville High School in 1980.

“I was bored with school,” Breault said last week, sitting in the University of Maine at Augusta library. “I didn’t want to go to college. I just wanted to travel around the world, and the military was all adventure and gung-ho.”

After four years in the Marines, he changed his mind and enrolled at UMA, graduating in 1991 with an associate degree in criminal justice. But he missed the military and its comradeship, so he joined the Army the year after graduating.

For the next several years, until 2009, Breault served in the Army.

While in the Army, Breault, the first on his father’s side of the family to attend college, learned the importance of education. So four years ago, he returned to UMA.

On Saturday, Breault, 53, will deliver the student commencement address to his fellow graduates, their relatives and friends at the Augusta Civic Center ceremony. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is scheduled to be the keynote speaker.

Breault, who lives in South China, is graduating with a bachelor’s degree in public administration and plans to attend the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service for a certificate of graduate study and possibly a master’s degree in public policy. He hopes to find a job in the nonprofit field, where he has experience from years volunteering at the Augusta Food Bank.

He learned in the military that people with college degrees would get the better, more challenging jobs and end up with better jobs after leaving the military. Leaders in both the Marines and Army stressed to him the importance of a college education.

“My time in the military taught me the importance of a good education if you want to get ahead, whether you’re in the military or the civilian world,” Breault said.

Although Breault’s family has a history of military service, it is short on formal education.

Breault’s father grew up in Waterville and spoke only French until he went to school at age 5. He barely graduated from high school and never went to college. Breault is one of five children.

The first on his father’s side of the family to go to college, Breault said some people in his family likely wanted to go to school, but they probably didn’t have the money for it.

“I don’t take that lightly. I really don’t,” Breault said. “I feel the responsibility of my ancestry.”

Breault’s wife, Peggy, also attends UMA. They have five children.

While at UMA, he explored his ancestry and minored in French. He completed an independent study on Acadian culture that culminated in a trip with the UMA French Club to the World Acadian Congress in Madawaska last August.

While in Madawaska, Breault and his family attended the Breault family reunion and met relatives from around the world.

Chelsea Ray, an associate professor of French and comparative literature at UMA, said Breault has “had an amazing journey at UMA.”

“I’m so proud of the work he’s done,” she said. “He has such a creative spirit, and he’s so dedicated. I’m always just amazed how passionate he is about serving and how much he wants to give back.”

Breault said he also feels fortunate this his education at UMA was funded by the new G.I. Bill, the federal law that covers the expenses of four-year undergraduate degrees for veterans who served after Sept. 11, 2001.

“I realize there are millions of Americans that would love to have that and don’t,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m not going to waste that. I’m going to get the most out of it and do well.”

SKOWHEGAN — Whose heritage is honored by the Native American image and the name “Indians” for sports teams?

Is it the players, parents and boosters of Skowhegan Area High School who say the nickname is their tradition, their identity and their way of respecting Native Americans by channeling their strength and bravery in sports competition?

Or does the heritage belong to the native people who lived for centuries along the banks of the Kennebec River, only to be wiped out by disease, war and racism with the arrival of Europeans?

That was the question Monday night during a public forum on the continued use of the word “Indians” as a sports mascot, nickname or good luck charm.

Speakers at the forum appeared to be evenly divided for and against keeping the name.

The School Administrative District 54 board agreed to hold the forum, at which only residents of the school district and state legislators were allowed to speak.

Representatives of the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Micmac tribes – all members of the umbrella Wabanaki federation in Maine – told a school board subcommittee April 13 that the use of the word Indians is an insult to Native Americans. Members of the four Indian tribes want the name changed. They say they are people and people are not mascots.

Each speaker was given two minutes to speak at Monday night’s forum, which was attended by more than 60 people.

Harold Bigelow of Skowhegan said there are Native Americans “who side with us” in support of keeping Skowhegan the Indians.

“The natives today are being compensated for their past with entitlements and free education,” Bigelow said. “I personally feel they ought to focus on their own problems within, rather than creating problems for others. It is definitely not racist. Do what is right – this is our history, not theirs.”

Mary Stuart of Canaan, a former SAD 54 teacher, stood to ask with a show of hands how many people in the audience were veterans. She then asked how many had relatives that were veterans. Many more hands were raised.

Stuart then said the people who are veterans get to say they are veterans – not their children and grandchildren – and it’s the same with American Indians.

“I am not a veteran, and we are not Indians,” she said.

School board members said last week that because tribal members had their chance to speak in April, that Monday’s forum was designed to give local people a chance to have their say.

The gymnasium at Skowhegan Area Middle School filled before the meeting with people holding signs saying “Retire the Mascot” and others wearing Skowhegan Indians baseball caps in support of keeping the name.

John Alsop of Cornville called for the elimination of the mascot name.

“I contend that if we wish to honor the Indians as we say that we do, we should start first by listening to them,” Alsop said. “If they say they do not want their heritage, their traditions, their culture and identity used as a mascot, then I think we should do as they ask. We should respect their point of view as friends.”

Judy York of Skowhegan disagreed, saying she grew up in poverty, just like many other people in the area, including the Native Americans. She said discussion on continued use of the word is all about a name. The school has dropped all of the offensive images of the past, York said.

“We no longer have the images on the shirts, fields or courts, so what is the problem?” York asked. “We have Indians on the brochures for tourism, so what is the difference? It’s who we are.”

Resident Sean Poirier agreed.

“We take pride in our community,” Poirier said. “We will be forever more Skowhegan Indians.”

Some said it was time to start a new tradition, one based on the actual history of Skowhegan and the Kennebec River. Others said the tradition of Skowhegan Indian pride was here to stay.

Skowhegan is one of the only high schools left in Maine with an Indian mascot, bucking a national trend to end racial stereotyping of American Indians as sports mascots.

The first Maine school to change was Scarborough High School in 2001. The school dropped Redskins in favor of Red Storm. Husson University eliminated the Braves nickname and became the Eagles. In 2011, Wiscasset High School and Sanford High School eliminated the Redskins nickname. Wiscasset teams are now known as the Wolverines, while Sanford athletes are the Spartans.

In Old Town, the nickname Indians was dropped and Coyotes was adopted.

The SAD 54 school board will discuss the matter at its regular meeting Thursday, possibly leading to a vote on the issue.

The president of University of Maine Fort Kent announced his retirement on Tuesday, the latest in a string of top leadership changes at the seven-campus system that has started to affect the system’s bond rating.

The announcement by Wilson Hess means the system has only two permanent presidents, Kate Foster in Farmington and Linda Schott in Presque Isle, both of whom were hired in 2012. The other campuses have temporary presidents, serving terms up to two years.

The University of Southern Maine campus recently hired a new permanent president, Harvey Kesselman, who will begin July 1. Currently Kesselman is acting president of Stockton College in New Jersey, where the president resigned last month after New York financier Donald Trump blocked the school’s plan to open a campus in a shuttered casino on the boardwalk that the university had purchased for $18 million.

The system’s flagship campus in Orono is led by President Sue Hunter, who was named to a two-year temporary term in July 2014. USM, the second-largest campus, has had two temporary presidents over the last three years and is currently led by President David Flanagan; the Augusta campus is led by Glenn Cummings, who was named to an open-ended temporary position in September 2014; and the Machias campus is led by President Joyce Hedlund, who was named to an open-ended temporary position in December 2014.

A temporary replacement for Hess will be in place by early summer, according to system spokesman Dan Demeritt. It is unknown when the system will open a search for a permanent replacement, he said.

In April, credit raing agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded its long-term outlook for the system from stable to negative, citing declining enrollment and high turnover among leadership at the seven campuses. The New York agency left the system’s credit rating unchanged at AA- on outstanding revenue debt, and also assigned a rating of AA- to the system’s $46.24 million in 2015 bonds.

Downgrading the outlook means that S&P thinks the system’s rating could be downgraded to an A+ if declining enrollment and revenue continue. A lower credit rating would mean the system would have to pay higher interest rates on any future borrowing.

Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Ken Rodgers noted the “significant turnover in leadership,” adding “we feel some weakness in governance and management might be occurring.”

On Tuesday, Hess said he was retiring after five years in office, having succeeded in turning around the school’s declining enrollment.

“I leave with a sense of completion,” Hess said in a statement, noting that enrollment grew 24 percent from fall 2010 to fall 2014.

“President Hess has provided his campus and the entire St. John Valley with innovative and strong, community-focused leadership,” Chancellor James Page said in a statement.

“On behalf of the Board of Trustees and our colleagues at each of Maine’s universities, I want to thank Wilson for his many accomplishments, his leadership, and the friendship that will persist long after he leaves office.”

After parents’ complaints and repeated votes to shift school hours, the Portland school board has approved new start and end times for elementary and middle schools beginning next fall.

The board is changing the start and end times for all city schools because it decided late last year to add 20 minutes of instruction to the school day. Because it has a limited number of school buses, the district is staggering start times so the buses can make multiple runs in the morning and afternoon.

The school day at all high schools will now start at 8 a.m. and end at 2:30 p.m. Middle schools will go from 7:55 a.m.–2:25 p.m.

Elementary schools are divided into two groups. Classes in group 1 – Riverton, Ocean Avenue, Reiche – will start at 8:20 a.m. and end at 2:50 p.m. Group 2 – Hall, East End, Longfellow, Lyseth, Presumpscot – will start at 8:40 a.m. and end at 3:10 p.m.

The board initially approved a plan to start high schools as late as 8:55 a.m., basing the decision on medical research showing that teenage students perform better if they sleep later and start school later. To accommodate that, the board moved up start times for some elementary schools to as early as 7:45 a.m., essentially flipping the elementary and high school start times.

But parents objected, started an online petition and spoke out at public hearings. The board changed the high school start back to 8 a.m., but once that was decided, several parents objected to the elementary school start times, starting a new cycle of discussion.

No parents or students spoke about the proposal at Tuesday’s meeting and the board approved the start times by a 7-1 vote with Laurie Davis dissenting.

At other meetings, most said 7:45 a.m. is simply too early, and staggered schedules could complicate after-school sports or cause scheduling problems for teachers who work at multiple schools, such as those teaching in the gifted-and-talented program.

On Tuesday, several board members said the experience made them realize they have to communicate better with the school communities.

“This certainly has been something we didn’t intend to be so contentious with our community,” board member Marnie Morrione said. “It’s a good example that we have to ensure on big issues like the calendar, busing … I’d rather take our time and be transparent and have lots of time to engage, instead of thinking we can just move forward.”

Board member Jenna Vendil was encouraged by the number of people who came out to speak on the proposals.

“I was really inspired by how the community came together to really fight for the things they believed in and to hold us accountable as public officials,” Vendil said. “I say thank you to parents and community members.”

School officials across Maine are scaling back their estimates of what they need set aside to pay local students’ charter-school tuition bills in anticipation of changes in the way charter schools are funded.

Under a bill awaiting Gov. Paul LePage’s signature, charter schools would receive money directly from the state rather than from the districts that send students to those schools. The current payment scheme has created huge expenses in recent years for districts located near popular charter schools.

Portland, for example, spent $250,000 last year on charter school tuition for students attending Baxter Academy for Technology and Science in Portland. And School Administrative District 54 in Skowhegan sent about $1 million to two nearby charter schools – Cornville Regional Charter School and Good Will-Hinckley in Fairfield.

“This bill best funds charter schools so that there isn’t this continuing animosity about school districts having to write checks to fund charter schools,” Maine Charter School Commission Chairwoman Shelley Reed said Wednesday night. “We think it’s just going to make things more palatable for everyone.”

Reed said 84 Maine school districts, which must currently track and file invoices for each student from their district that attends a charter school, will be affected by the legislation.

“It’s in everyone’s best interest that this becomes law,” she said.

There are six charter schools operating in Maine, including schools in Portland, South Portland, Gray and Harpswell. The Maine Connections Academy, which is based in South Portland, is a virtual school. A seventh school, The Maine Virtual Academy, is set to open this fall.

Portland Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk could not be reached for comment Wednesday night, but last year the Portland School District sent about $250,000 to charter schools to cover the costs of district students who attended them. Portland’s 2015-16 education budget, which will go to a citywide referendum vote Tuesday, presumes the governor will sign the bill. Caulk has not budgeted any funds for charter schools in 2015-16.

The Maine Senate passed L.D. 131 on Tuesday and sent it the governor, who has supported the change and is expected to sign it into law.

“This new funding method will relieve the unpredictable financial impact of charters to individual districts and is expected to be overwhelmingly supported by leaders of Maine’s school districts,” LePage’s office said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

“The change will also allow Maine to move beyond the divisive debate about charter school funding and refocus on how to create opportunities for students to be the most successful at Maine public schools, whether they be charter or traditional,” the statement said. Reed, with the charter school commission, said there doesn’t appear to be any opposition to L.D. 131.

“Once that’s signed, school districts will know that they will not be paying the bill for charter schools come this fall,” Suzan Beaudoin, the director of school finance and operations at the Maine Department of Education, said Wednesday.

Skowhegan schools were expecting to budget up to $1 million for charter school tuition costs next year. Fairfield-based SAD 49 was looking at an increase of more than eight times what it budgeted for 2014-15.

Although the bill would ease budgeting for school districts, it also means they could lose some state funding in the future.

Students who change to a charter school will be treated as if they moved to a new school district, and state funding will follow them, Beaudoin said. The result will be a reduction in state education aid to a local district for each student who attends a charter school. But that amount is considerably less than the entire tuition bill for each student that local districts pay under the current rules.

The coming year will be a grace period when schools won’t lose funding for the students who attend charter schools, which also will not have to pay the school bills, Beaudoin said.

Charter school payments total an estimated $6 million, Beaudoin said.

Local school officials will have to take the charter funding out of their anticipated expense budgets.

In SAD 49, payments to charters accounted for more than a third of the projected $2.1 million budget increase facing property taxpayers. School Board Vice Chairwoman Shelley Rudnicki said Wednesday that she intended to make a motion to remove that expense from the budget at the annual budget meeting Thursday.

In SAD 54, the administration didn’t even wait to take the money out of the budget. Superintendent Brent Colbry said his administration initially built in around $996,000 to pay for the 107 students it sends to charters, but pulled the money out as the legislation’s chances improved.

SAD 54, along with other districts, has been fighting for changes to how charter schools are funded for at least two years. The difference this year, Colbry said, is that other school districts that aren’t near a charter school are starting to feel the pinch from virtual charters, such as Maine Connections Academy, which opened in 2014.

“I think everyone is very confident it’s going to happen,” Colbry said. “All it needs now is the governor’s signature.”

Press Herald Staff Writer Dennis Hoey contributed to this report.

Following the opening of two virtual charter schools in Maine, state officials are trying to find a way to offer a state-sponsored version that would offer online texts and courses for all Maine students.

But testimony on two virtual education bills Thursday highlighted the disagreements over how best to do it.

“I think almost all Maine schools are (already) accessing online content to some extent,” said Rep. Brian Hubbell, D-Bar Harbor, sponsor of one of the bills, L.D. 39.

“We don’t know how well integrated that is. I’m assuming there’s a lot more opportunity out there than is being taken advantage of,” Hubbell told the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee at a public hearing Thursday.

Hubbell’s bill would have the Maine Department of Education work to develop state-backed online learning resources and possibly create a state-sponsored virtual school. It also requires the state to partner with New Hampshire, so Maine students could enroll in that state’s online school, the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, by this fall.

The state Department of Education opposes that bill, in part because it would require them to work with New Hampshire instead giving them a choice of vendors, and because the state believes teachers and students already have access to online tools ranging from fee-based courses to free websites open to all, such as Khan Academy or the state-funded AP4All advanced placement online courses.

“Schools have no problem finding additional quality online learning resources and opportunities,” said Mike Muir, the department’s director of the Learning Through Technology team.

The education department supports another virtual education bill, L.D.1230, sponsored by the committee’s Senate chairman, Brian Langley, R-Ellsworth, that would set up an online website curated and overseen by the department. Education vendors would pay to place class materials on the site and charge users for access to the classes.

Hubbell and Langley both emphasized the need for a single website that pools materials that have been vetted and approved by the state, and has some sort of user-review system, something Langley compared to Amazon and its feedback section. Such as site could list a generally available Khan Academy math course, but also inform users that the course had been reviewed and specifically meets Maine’s seventh-grade math requirements.

A similar bill to establish an online library of education resources had bipartisan support last session, but was defeated because it included language that would have imposed a moratorium on new virtual charter schools. The current bills do not reference charter schools.

Although Hubbell’s bill could set up the equivalent of a state-sponsored virtual school, discussion Thursday focused on offering individual courses for teachers, districts, students or any Maine resident to access.

The state’s teachers union and the Maine School Management Association supported both bills.

“We know many small schools, particularly rural Maine high schools, may struggle to provide a myriad of courses to students, especially during times of extreme budgetary restriction,” said John Kosinski of the Maine Education Association. “(Hubbell’s bill) will get Maine on the right path.”

Online educational resources are already available to Maine students, from free websites to educational cooperatives such as the fee-based Virtual High School, which already serves about 50 Maine high schools.

The Maine Department of Education also lists preapproved online learning providers. The eight schools currently on the list include New Hampshire’s Virtual Learning Academy and the two for-profit education providers working with the state’s virtual charter schools.

Maine Connections Academy, the state’s existing virtual charter school, contracts its services from Connections Academy, a division of Maryland-based Connections Education, a for-profit company that manages virtual charter schools in more than 20 states. The company is owned by Pearson PLC in London, a multinational corporation that formulates standardized tests and publishes textbooks for many schools in the U.S.

Maine Virtual Academy is slated to open in the fall, and contracts with K12 Inc. of Herndon, Virginia, the nation’s largest online education company, for academic services.

A 2012 Maine Sunday Telegram investigation of K12 and Connections Education found that Maine’s digital education policies were being shaped in ways that benefited the two companies, that the companies recruited board members to lobby for creation of charter schools in the state, and that their schools in other states had fared poorly in analyses of student achievement.

Langley said he modeled his legislation on an Ohio site, called ilearnOhio, which is funded with about $1.5 million from the state legislature and administered by and located at Ohio State University, under the direction of the Ohio Board of Regents. That site has a searchable database of content from multiple education content vendors that is pre-approved and in line with the state’s education standards. Most content is free for Ohio schools, but the site also offers fee-based courses.

Langley said he didn’t think Maine’s costs would be as high as Ohio’s, and suggested a Maine site could be funded through the Fund for Efficient Delivery of Education Services, which the state DOE can use to issue grants.

New Hampshire’s site, created in 2007, is an online virtual public high school and middle school, free to New Hampshire residents and available for either part-time or full-time students. Students from other states can attend for a fee. The New Hampshire school is funded by the state’s Education Trust Fund, which gets money from statewide property and utility taxes and portions of business and tobacco taxes, sweepstakes funds, and tobacco settlement funds.

They take two hours, cost participants tens of thousands of dollars and are remembered in detail by virtually no one, and this week, they begin around southern Maine.

College graduation season starts Friday, when the first batch of graduates will squirm in their polyester robes while honorary degree recipients, both famous and not-so-famous, regale them with life advice.

Colby College snagged by far the most recognizable speaker, drawing actor Robert Redford, who will also receive an honorary doctorate.

Other notables include the speaker for the University of Southern Maine, which will welcome Richard Blanco on Friday at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland. Blanco, who splits his time between Bethel and Boston, rose to prominence when he was selected as the presidential inaugural poet at the second inauguration of President Obama in January 2013.

On the same day in Standish, Saint Joseph’s College will send its seniors into the world, but not before they hear a few words from a local heavyweight in the world of public health, Elizabeth McLellan, president and founder of Partners for World Health in South Portland.

In Bangor, Husson University will welcome NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy, a graduate of York High School.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Northern New England, will deliver the keynote address at The University of New England’s commencement ceremony at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland on Saturday, May 16 at 10 a.m. Roosevelt, the granddaughter of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, joined Goodwill in 2011 and has been active in the fields of philanthropy, public policy, politics, the arts and higher education.

The 80 graduates of Maine Law will hear from former U.S. Rep. Tom Allen at its commencement at the swank Merrill Auditorium. Allen represented Maine’s 1st District from 1997 to 2009, and now leads the Association of American Publishers.

Other schools are also tapping local pols, both state and federal.

Maine House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, will give the address at York County Community College. U.S. Sen. Angus King will speak before Kennebec Valley Community College students.

Local notable Joan Benoit Samuelson, Olympic gold medalist and champion distance runner, will speak at the University of Farmington.

Bates College in Lewiston, meanwhile, has written its own equation for commencement success, bringing Princeton mathematician Manjul Bhargava to address the class of 2015 at its May 31 ceremony.

Bhargava was the 2014 recipient of the Fields Medal, the highest award in mathematics. At 40, he is among the youngest full professors in Princeton history.

SKOWHEGAN — Sports teams and students in School Administrative District 54 will continue to identify themselves as the “Indians” after the school board voted against changing the nickname Thursday, but some school officials and name-change advocates say the issue is not over and agree that more education should happen.

The district’s 23-member school board narrowly voted to reject dropping the use of the word “Indians” following months of debate on the issue. Maine tribes say nicknames and mascots such as “Indians” and imagery related to Native Americans are derogatory and disrespectful and should be removed from schools and sports teams. But many people in the school district say the Indians name is representative of local heritage and is an important school tradition intended to honor Native Americans.

The board’s decision to vote Thursday came as a surprise to some, including Barry Dana of Solon, former chief of the Penobscot Nation, one of the four tribes that make up the Wabanaki federation. Dana said he was disappointed with the outcome and thought the process was rushed leading up to the vote, which was held less than a month after two public meetings about the issue.

“It’s a highly emotionally charged issue,” SAD 54 Superintendent Brent Colbry said Friday. “Obviously people are very passionate on both sides, and I think they wanted some resolution on it. I don’t think they wanted it to linger on.

DANA TO REDIRECT EFFORTS

Dana said he plans to redirect his energy to national efforts to end the use of Native American names and imagery as sports mascots. SAD 54 is one of two school districts in Maine to retain a nickname that invokes Native American heritage.

“I’m really big on process,” Dana said. “I would not expect a full 23-member board to all be able to fully comprehend the entire situation based on the amount of time we’ve had in this process for education. The whole process was cut short. I never advocate jumping to making a decision until all the information is presented.”

There is one vacancy on the SAD 54 school board, and two members – Jessie Roderick of Skowhegan and Roger Stinson of Norridgewock – were absent at Thursday’s vote.

Stinson said Friday that he would have voted against changing the name. “I was called by a lot of townspeople and I’ve talked to a lot of people,” he said. “It was 11-9, and it would have been 12-9 if I’d been there.”

Roderick could not be reached for comment.

Under the district’s voting system, which weights board members’ votes according to the population of the towns they represent, the motion technically was defeated 482-391. Most of the votes against changing the name came from board members outside Skowhegan: The votes were 315 yes and 212 no among Skowhegan board members, and 46 yes and 281 no from members in other district towns.

MOUNTING PRESSURE FROM PUBLIC

Liz Anderson, chairwoman of the school board, said Friday the board’s decision to take a vote came as a result of mounting pressure from the public and the need for the board to move ahead with other work, such as the budget. Anderson, who voted in favor of changing the nickname, said she thinks the issue will come up again.

“I feel like at this point we’ve done everything we were supposed to do,” Anderson said. “We listened to both sides intently, we checked into the legalities of everything and we went through the democratic process.”

Representatives of the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Micmac tribes told a school board subcommittee April 13 that the use of the word “Indians” is an insult to them. Members of the four tribes, as well as the Bangor NAACP and others, want the name changed, saying the tribes are people and that people are not mascots.

At a forum Monday attended by more than 60 people, the school board allowed district residents and state legislators to speak about the issue.

Several board members spoke Thursday night about the dozens of emails and phone calls they had received, as well as some threats – that they wouldn’t be re-elected for voting a certain way, that the school budget would be rejected or that the recently refurbished Bernard Langlais Indian sculpture, an icon in downtown Skowhegan, would be harmed.

“There was a lot of pressure from both sides on the issue,” Colbry said. “I think the board was very plain about that themselves. I can’t second-guess what they decided to do.”

Valerie Coulombe, a board member and a supporter of the Indians nickname, set up her home voicemail with a message supporting the name and asking those who do not to not call back. She said the board faced pressure from both sides that made it hard to come to a decision.

MACHIAS — When Kat Ragot, 42, accepts her diploma for a bachelor of arts degree Saturday from the University of Maine at Machias, she will finish a journey that began 25 years ago and left her nearly $40,000 in debt.

While fellow classmates who graduated from her first college, Carnegie Mellon University, went on to enjoy successful careers, Ragot dropped out, then struggled to make ends meet while working a series of low-paying jobs and raising two children on her own. She defaulted on her student loans, but later restored her credit so she could borrow more money and return to school.

She needs that college degree, she says, so she can get a better-paying job and climb out of the financial hole she has fallen into.

“There’s no way around it,” she says of her lingering debt. “It’s kind of like a mortgage. The payoff will ultimately be more security – and that’s a debt worth taking on.”

Today more than ever, a college degree is a pathway to the middle class. But failing to stay on that path can be devastating to students like Ragot, who drop out or take years to finish. They are more likely to struggle financially through life and default on their college loans.

A lot of people in Maine have started on the path to a college diploma and have fallen off.

Between 180,000 and 230,000 Mainers have attended college but never received a degree, according to a 2014 report by Educate Maine, a business-led education advocacy group. For Mainers age 25 and older, one in five have had some college education but no degree, a rate slightly higher than the average in the Northeast, according to 2013 estimates by the U.S. Census.

While there are no data available on the size of the debt burden carried by Mainers who never finish college, the vast majority of students who default on their student loans never finished college, according to data tracked by the Finance Authority of Maine.

Those who default on student loans are prohibited from discharging the debt through bankruptcy. The federal government can work through a collection agency to garnish wages, income tax refunds and Social Security benefits.

The financial consequences of default are long-lasting, says John Dorrer, a workforce development expert and former chief economist and research director of the Maine Department of Labor.

“You can’t shake that off,” he says. “It follows you through life.”

DEFAULTERS IN A CATCH-22

There aren’t many stranded learners from Maine’s elite private colleges like Bowdoin and Bates, which select students from a large pool of applications and weed out those who are at risk of dropping out early. At Bowdoin College, for example, of the 147 students who began repaying their student loans in fiscal year 2011, only one student defaulted on federally subsidized student loans over the ensuing three years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

At Southern Maine Community College, 322 of the 1,575 students who began making payments that year defaulted – a rate of more than 20 percent. Washington County Community College had a default rate of nearly 30 percent.

The national average for the same time period is 13.7 percent. In Maine, 2,300 of the 18,000 borrowers who began making repayments in 2011 defaulted within three years – a rate of 12.8 percent. These default rates don’t include students who default after three years or who default on private loans.

Between 70 percent and 90 percent of Maine residents who default on federal student loans every year have never finished college, according to Mary Dyer, a financial education officer at the Finance Authority of Maine. This performance is consistent with data tracked by states across the country, Dyer said.

The defaulters typically owe a relatively modest amount, $9,500 to $14,000, but aren’t able to pay off the loan because they lack the diploma or certificate that gives them access to a decent-paying job, she says. With bad credit, they can’t borrow money and return to college and finish the degree, so they become trapped in low-paying jobs with no way out.

“They are in a Catch-22,” she says. “They can’t get financial aid to pay for school, but to complete a degree they need financial aid.”

Borrowers default on loans if they don’t make on-time repayment in nine consecutive months or if they fail to make some kind of arrangement with the loan servicer, such as creating a new payment plan based on their income. The federal government estimates that 18.4 percent of students who began making their loan payments in 2011 will default within 20 years.

WORTH THE COST

While Maine’s high school graduation rate is higher than most states, Maine trails the nation in the percentage of students who enroll in college; it does slightly better in the percentage who stay there.

For every 100 Maine students entering ninth grade, 86 will graduate from high school and 50 will enroll in college within a year. But only 33 will graduate from a two-year or four-year college, according to the 2014 National Clearinghouse Student Tracker report for Maine and the Maine Department of Education.

Nationally, for every 100 students entering ninth grade, 75 will graduate from high school and 51 will enroll in college within a year. Only 29 will graduate from college.

Most of the dropouts leave after their freshman year before they rack up too much debt, but the more tragic cases are those who leave in their junior or senior years, says Rosa Redonnett, chief student affairs officer at the University of Maine System. Those students leave heavily in debt, but all the classes they’ve already taken don’t count for much in the workplace.

“It’s a stranded investment,” she said. “You made this big investment, and it doesn’t result in anything other than debt.”

Despite sharp increases in tuition at higher education institutions nationally in recent years, a college degree is generally worth the cost – about $1 million more in additional income over a lifetime, according to numerous national studies, including a 2014 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

College graduates are more likely to be employed than those with a high school diploma or some college. The unemployment rate in March for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher was just 2.5 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for those with some college or an associate degree was 4.8 percent, and for high school graduates it was 5.3 percent.

Although a college degree is worth the money, not all types are an equally good investment. While the specific college a student attends matters, to some extent what really counts in earning power is what he studies, says Anthony Carnevale, an economist who is director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The financial payoff is significantly greater for those who major in engineering or computers rather than the humanities.

For students studying social sciences, physical sciences and biology, getting a master’s degree boosts their income because jobs for candidates who hold just a bachelor’s degree tend to be scarce. A few majors, like psychology, aren’t worth more than a high school diploma unless students also go on to a master’s degree, Carnevale says.

FOR POOR, HIGHEST RISK

There is one group, Carnevale says, for whom not finishing college turns out to be a terrible investment: working-class students who drop out and default on their loans. With ruined credit, they will almost never get another loan and the financial setback is so great they may never recover.

“The big losers in the game are the non-completers,” he says. “The rich kids can make a lot of mistakes. For the poor kid, that’s it. If you screw up, you’re done.”

The dropout problem is greatest among the nation’s community colleges. Nationally, just 35 percent of full-time community college students seeking a degree graduate within five years. By then another 45 percent have “given up completely” and are no longer enrolled, according to a report released in February by MDRC, a nonpartisan education and social policy research organization based in New York City and Oakland, California.

Unlike selective private colleges and public universities, community colleges can’t exclude students who are poorly prepared. In addition, despite the relatively low tuition cost of most community colleges, poor students still struggle to pay tuition bills, and cope by working more hours or attending school part time, both of which lead to reduced academic success, according to the MDRC report.

Many students are the first in their families to attend college and are less likely to understand how to navigate college, the report says.

That was the situation with Spencer Hardy, 20, of Parsonsfield, who earned his high school diploma after passing a GED test and enrolled in Central Maine Community College in Auburn to study culinary arts and business. After a year and a half of schooling, he stopped attending classes but still lived in the dorm. He now owes about $12,000 in student loans. He would like to return to college, but says he can’t until he pays the college back the $2,700 he still owes. The college also won’t give him his transcript until he pays the money.

The chances he’ll default on his loan seem high. With no job, Hardy is so strapped for cash that the water company recently shut off the service in his apartment for lack of payment.

His mother, Kristin Hardy, who never attended college herself and cleans houses for a living, says she’s frustrated her son didn’t get more guidance in college and that the system seems rigged against poor families. Still, her son is ultimately responsible for what’s happened, she says. “I tell him it’s a trap he put himself in.”

For Laura Applin, 24, who works as a waitress at Becky’s Diner in Portland, leaving college made sense because she couldn’t justify paying huge tuition bills when she lacked direction.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said. “I felt I was wasting all my money on school.”

Applin attended Simmons College in Boston for a year and then transferred to the University of Southern Maine, where she was a part-time student for less than a year. Her college loan debt, originally $26,000, is now down to $17,000. She plans to return to college and study business because she wants to open her own specialty grocery store someday.

Older students who return to college, however, often face obstacles because their lives become more complicated. They have bills to pay, like car payments, and often children to support and care for.

Ragot, of Cutler, began taking classes at the University of Maine at Machias in the late 1990s. She dropped out, though, needing to earn only 18 more credits for a bachelor’s degree. She was barely getting by financially and had to get a job to pay the bills. Moreover, her two young boys were both sick at the same time and needed her attention.

“It was brutal,” she says of that time in her life. “Being a poor, single mom in Maine is an insecure situation no matter how much education you have. There are so many barriers.”

COLLEGES OFFERING MORE GUIDANCE

Some students drop out because they’re not prepared academically, says Glenn Cummings, acting president of the University of Maine at Augusta, a commuter school that mostly serves adults who have jobs and families. Those students, who must take remedial courses, start college at a disadvantage because the remedial classes cost money but aren’t counted as college credits, he says. Other students do well academically but are so “financially fragile” that an unexpected event, such as losing hours at a part-time job or costly car repairs, causes them to drop out because they can’t make the tuition payments anymore.

Cummings tells students that the financial cost of quitting is so high that they must be prepared to finish college once they start.

“Higher education is like walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers,” Cummings said. “You have to keep walking. You have to put one foot in front of the other. You have to keep making progress.”

Only 26 percent of the university’s students, including those who begin as part-time students, graduate within six years. This year, the university began offering $1,000 “Fresh Start” scholarships to give students who owe a previous balance an opportunity to return to UMA.

The University of Maine System last year began offering as much as $4,000 per year in scholarships to adult students returning to school after an absence of three years or more. The $1 million scholarship program is primarily intended to encourage students who already have earned a significant number of credits to complete their degrees quickly.

In addition, the system has established a “concierge” service at each campus, modeled after the hospitality industry, to guide students through the education process, such as choosing a major and finding financial assistance.

Financial aid staffers at each school are also helping defaulters restore their credit, a long and complicated process that requires students to get back into good standing with the agency that services the loan.

Despite all the data showing that college graduates earn more money, it’s still more difficult for adults to return to school. Their lives are more complicated when they get older, and they need a lot of individual guidance to figure out ways around potential obstacles, such as paying for college and arranging for child care, Redonnett says.

“It’s still a rough road for people to come back,” she said.

The community college and university systems also are working to prevent people from dropping out in the first place.

Cummings says research shows that students respond well when they have strong personal connections with adults at the college, such as a faculty member or adviser. The college is now hiring its first “success coach” to give students individual attention. The program is modeled after the “Path to Graduation” program established last year by Southern Maine Community College.

The KeyBank of Maine Foundation is giving $500,000 to SMCC to hire two full-time advisers to assist 90 students in the first year and 150 students in following years. Although the college’s enrollment has been growing over the last decade, only 14 percent of SMCC students graduate within three years, with another 18 percent of students transferring out to another college.

Ryan Donkin, a first-year student from Naples, says he got poor grades in school because he focused on having fun rather than studying. When he first started at SMCC, the workload was overwhelming.

“I really had no plan for success. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know why I was there,” he said.

He now meets with his success coach, Kristi Kaeppel, once or twice a week and communicates with her by email about five times a week. He says Kaeppel helps him plan his time, stay organized and figure out what courses to take.

“You have a feeling that you are not alone,” he said.

MANCHESTER — The last time Scott Berry took a college computer course, it was 1982 and computer programs then were stored on punch cards.

This spring, he took a computer course online at the University of Maine at Augusta, where he plans to graduate in December with a bachelor’s degree in business management.

Berry, 53, works as a facility director for a regional behavioral health agency. He says a college diploma is a personal goal, but it could also help him find another job at some point in the future.

“You can’t really sit down and talk with somebody unless you have a piece of paper these days,” he said.

Berry received a $1,000 annual scholarship from a fund created by the University of Maine System a year ago to help adult Mainers return to college to complete their degrees. Recipients may qualify for as much as $4,000 per year in scholarships for up to four years.

Currently, there are very few scholarships or other financial aid available in Maine for adults, especially those who work full time. The new scholarships are for adult students returning to a university after an absence of three years or more, and are completing their very first baccalaureate degree. Courses may be taken at any of the seven universities in the UMaine System.

Berry earned his associate degree from the University of Southern Maine in 1983, but decided to look for adventures out West rather than go on to a four-year degree.

Today, he’s a lot more self-assured than he was as a young man, he said.

“I feel more confident, and I’m able to handle the workload way better than when I was young,” he said.

MACHIAS — Douglas Haig, 32, studied for five years at Pratt Institute, an art school in New York City that costs about $45,000 a year in tuition and fees.

He never graduated, though, because he switched between majors and had to take additional courses.

“I didn’t have any guidance. I didn’t know what to shoot for,” Haig said.

The Florida native became fed up with the cutthroat atmosphere at the school and quit to become an independent artist.

But without connections in the art world, he struggled to pay his bills and ended up joining the Army as a medic, serving between 2007 and 2012, including a 10-month tour in Iraq in 2010.

He’s studying art now at the University of Maine at Machias, his tuition paid for by the Army, and will graduate this year.

However, he still owes tens of thousands of dollars in college loans. He doesn’t know how much he owes, and doesn’t know how he’s going to pay the money back.

He just knows this much: “I am going to be in debt for the rest of my life,” he said.

LONG ISLAND — Dropping out of college doesn’t lead to financial hardship in every case.

When Steve Train, 48, left Northeastern University in Boston as a young man, he had only 12 courses left to take before he would graduate with a business degree. By then, however, the Long Island resident had decided he wanted to be a lobsterman. So he decided to spend his limited funds on buying more lobster traps and a larger boat, rather than pay for college tuition for a degree he would never need.

Luckily for Train, the lobster industry proved to be a good investment. It’s a sustainable fishery that has seen increasing catch volumes over the years.

“I’m fortunate my industry is OK,” he said. “If I had chosen groundfishing instead of being a lobsterman, I wouldn’t be able to make a living now.”

Did he did make the right decision?

“I like what I do and I’m happy,” he said. “To me, that’s the measure.”

But Train now has two daughters, ages 17 and 14, and he wants both of them to go to college. He worries, though, about the cost.

That’s why he bought a bigger boat to allow him to continue lobstering even in the winter, when lobsters move to deeper offshore waters.

“I have to fish harder to help my daughters out more,” he said.